ALBUM REVIEW: wilt & blossom – Cartographs
One of the most striking traits that an album can possess is the ability to feel relatable, and move its audience. For a band to be capable of harnessing their energy, both positive and negative, and channel it in an effective and efficient manner through their music is a difficult task, but one that can truly draw in the listener and allow us to feel fully immersed; fully involved with the thematic schema being portrayed. This is the approach that Danish up-and-comers CARTOGRAPHS have taken with their debut LP wilt & blossom.
Confident enough in their own ability to build ambience without being unnecessarily brash, they have sculpted an album in great taste, one which denotes a band already sure about how they want to sound. That isn’t to say that they have pigeon-holed themselves as anything in particular, however. Their melodic hardcore roots shine through from the offset, but through dabbling with what could be described as more niche influences such as black metal and folk music, their sound has blossomed into a delta of possibility, and given them the versatility required to construct their intended emotional soundscape brick by brick.
wilt & blossom kicks off with it’s title track, opening with a swathe of white noise that falls beautifully into a slow and moody headbang. Anguished vocals then join the mix alongside eerie melodic riffs, quickly giving the impression that this an album wearing its heart proudly upon its sleeve. This atmosphere is continued into second track ever scaling, where the pace remains equal parts steady and intelligent, as opposed to feeling like the all-out auditory assault it could easily have become, given its themes of personal loss and sadness. Instead the angst is refined, feeling much more like a post-rock album, with CARTOGRAPHS seemingly being careful not to lean too far towards black-metal despair.
As we are introduced to track three, peace was never mine to be found, we see yet more of the same, and this could perhaps be the only downside to an otherwise solid debut album. Given the scope of influence that CARTOGRPAPHS have drawn from, we could perhaps have been lavished with a little more variety. There is no denying the quality of the work we can see across the entirety of the record, but there could well have been the potential to push its boundaries even further still and create something truly special.
Plausibly, the stand out track from the album is through the garden gate, during which a perfectly engineered bassline cuts right through to the soul, especially once amalgamated with CARTOGRAPHS’ signature melodic lead guitar. While lost in the beauty of tracks like this, it’s easy to forget that wilt & blossom is a debut full-length, and whether or not it may feel as though CARTOGRAPHS have chosen to take a relatively safe path at times, their attention to detail and finely attuned ear for melody should allow them to unleash this record to the world with their heads held high.
wilt & blossom is an album destined to be listened with eyes closed, in order to allow its orchestral mannerisms to submerge us deep within it’s personal, and sometimes philosophical, subject matter. From the white noise intro of wilt & blossom‘s opening title track right through to the hugely impressive, near ten-minute closing track blossom under leaves, CARTOGRAPHS’ affinity for both harsh and mellow music has allowed them to plant the seed of something quite special. It will be exciting to watch how that seed begins to flourish.
Rating: 8/10
wilt & blossom is set for release March 1st via Prime Collective.
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