I don't see what the big deal is about The Mars Volta (for instance this is a thread for At the drive in and it became about The Mars Volta pretty quick). At the drive-in is a decent band, not something I listen to often but not bad.

I like TMV's first album, but what I heard of the second didn't encourage me to keep interested in them, neither did what I heard about their subsequent album and live efforts.

But yeah ATDI doesn't exist any more and Sparta rather sucks, so it's not illogical that there's more talk about TMV now.