I love hearing the influence of bands I already love in new music. Maybe The Cartographer weren’t necessarily thinking of Fear Factory when they wrote “Vultures”, but that’s kind of what I’m getting. Taken from their Human Error EP released last year, we’ve got the video premiere for this groovy beast of a track. With consumer tastes in “proper” metal changing so rapidly, it’s nice to have a band to remind people that certain sounds are always satisfying. It’s groovy and it’s heavy and it will damn well make you bang your head.
Call it djent, tech… whatever you want. That’s your opinion and it belongs to you. The dirty low end riffs belong to The Cartographer. It’s a familiar attack in parts but the “progressive” side of this kind of metal is at a level palatable to anyone who turns their nose up at the mere mention of the word. The Fear Factory influence I’m feeling comes with the songs opening verse riff, a staccato attack of growling chugs. Certain stylistic tropes pop up but selectively and not without reason. There’s no overreach but plenty of strong bones on this; their influences listed on Facebook do manifest in places but c’mon, most of those bands are at the top of their field.
The performance video for “Vultures” is pure performance, back lit and hazy enough to give it that vibe. It’s not gonna win any awards but what it does do is make sure that attention rests on the well structured beast of track. I still love these videos, from the really bad ones to the slow mo-smoke machine classics like this but the music is what we click on these things for. I’d definitely like to see a live performance video for these guys though. Next time guys?
Human Error was a nice little find for me (thanks Steph) as this might normally lie outwith my reach, but it’s always nice to be surprised. The young guns get the dosage of djent and not-djent just right. One can only imagine they’ll just get heavier too. A new EP is in the works and the band should be touring their native UK and Europe soon. Kids and grumpy old dudes both will be joining in the whole room headbang. One of those crack a smile moments at a show.