By Jacob Sahms

Cartel got their start with the help of some online fans, a spot on the Madden 2007 roster, and a trip on the Warped Tour. Alternative Press hailed them as “A Band You Need To Know,” and the quintet is shockingly more upbeat than the average band of their caliber. Hailing from outside Atlanta, third grade friends Kevin Sanders and Nic Hudson joined lead singer Will Pugh, guitarist Joseph Pepper and bassist Jeff Lett in high school to form the band. Chroma is the result of their collaboration, as Pugh says, “I think that was our original goal, to write something that all worked together, not necessarily as a concept album, but that flowed and didn’t feel like a compilation of songs.”

“Say Anything (Else)” leads off, as Pugh encourages listeners to “open up and look inside and you will see, yeah/Someday you’ll sing it out loud/One day this will make you proud.” His best advice is saved for this: “It’s time for you to understand/Stop getting up for the let down/Oh, who you are is not up to them/Stop getting up for the let down.” While Cartel isn’t the first ‘alternative,’ ‘punk’ band to encourage independent thought, and freedom from peer pressure, they certainly provide more optimism than their peers.

Pugh’s articulation about his own experience with a painful break-up has served as material for the album’s first single, “Honestly,” but honestly, it doesn’t do much for this reviewer. Other tracks, like “Runaway,” which go after the same sorts of false ideals that “Say Anything” does, provide more interesting advice and attempts toward intervention in the lives of others. Both “Runaway” and “Matter of Time” warn listeners that they can only hide from their feelings of unworthiness and self-contempt. As Cartel sings, “when we try to just get by/we just can’t get past ourselves.” Recognizing that we hold ourselves back from our own success, Pugh’s lyrics call for full disclosure of our fears and secrets, so that the outside pressures of the world won’t hold us down.

“Burn This City” presents a harder edge, with more bite than what they’ve presented before, but more along the lines of what you’d expect from a punk rock band. “At least we know, that if we die- we lived with passion,” Pugh croons. The energy focused positively in the first few songs, followed by the pain of the next few, including “Save Us,” provides us with some of Cartel’s motivation. “We hold these truths self-evident/The lies we used to represent/Who we are, because it was never meant to be,” the band rocks. “And all the songs we used to sing,/They used to tell us everything./All about how it was never meant to be.” Cartel tried living the dreams of others, and found them to be empty—and doesn’t want anyone making the same mistakes.

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