Cartel - Learning How To Cope

CARTEL didn’t come back just to look backward. After criss-crossing the globe for the 20th anniversary of their landmark album Chroma, the Conyers, GA-formed trio have used that momentum to light the fuse on their future on LEARNING HOW TO COPE (Field Day Records), their first album in 13 years. Written against a backdrop of both personal reckoning and global unrest, the album pairs the hook-driven songwriting the group has always been known for with sharper edges, heavier weight and a renewed sense of purpose.

The album’s 12 songs find vocalist Will Pugh taking aim at a wide range of targets – the ruling class, broken systems and personal betrayals, among them – in a way that’s equal parts confrontational and cathartic. Songs like first single “Oxy Moron” and “Deadbeat Drag” lean into the trio’s ’90s alt-rock influences, while the riff-heavy “Shirts & Skins” and “Supercalapocalypticexpialidocious” elevate a deep-rooted hardcore ethos and reject the idea that music should stay neutral when the world outside is anything but. It all combines to make Learning How To Cope the most important album of the band’s career on both a personal and artistic level. After playing to hundreds of thousands of fans at Warped Tour, Slam Dunk and When We Were Young, it would have been easy for Cartel to choose comfort over disruption. Instead, they’ve done what they’ve always been best at: challenging themselves and their audience alike, armed with something important to say.