Album Review: The Cartographer – The Collapse Of A Bitter End
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Formed back in 2013, Derbyshire quintet The Cartographer is all set to release the debut album, The Collapse of the Bitter End this month, taking their modern metalcore-meets-the New American Wave of Heavy Metal so prevalent in the early years of the millennium, and filtering it through lived-experience.
Having supported the likes of Loathe, Hacktivist and King 810, as well as appearing at UK Tech Fest and at the 2025 Bloodstock Open Air, the band have built on those and their multiple extended players when approaching this first full-length.
The album’s opening track, Blood, was also the first single, and kicks the record off with industrial beats and a screeching electronic riff; huge percussive slabs crash as drummer Josh Woodhouse delivers monstrous detonations from the kit and Jay Roberts barks barbaric vocals. Second single, Griefworn begins with a racing energy and driving rhythms, so bristling with Slipknot-ire that you can almost feel the heat of flames on your face as you listen. Build around a gritty and unstoppable progression this one is sure to find an audience and should become a future classic.
Those Slipknot vibes can also be heard in the alternative and groove-laden Snake Tongue, which had bassist Tom Broadhead picking out some industrial-coloured bounces, as guitarists Dan Gorman and Josh Pearson fire hard-hitting machine-gun riffs before brutal beatdowns. All Things Rot in Silence deals with issues of neglect while dropping massive beats; Dirt slows things down a little with a coarse progression and a raging anger.
The sub-three-minute Apparition is likely to join Griefworn as some of the first names on the setlist going forward, as The Collapse of the Bitter End’s gloves come off and The Cartographer serve up a near perfect blend of fast, twisting thrash that tickles the fancy in all the right places.
The white-knuckle ride that is Soul Chamber brings back those grooving, bouncing riffs, adds some fearsome pounding and a big breakdown, without ever letting go of the grip around your neck. The accompanying flourishes may provide some distraction, but this one never loses its savage intensity.
Closing duo of Into the Gloom and Exodus are both marked with Blood’s industrial scent, the former perverting its melodic underscoring with a dark and menacing vocal; the latter is haunting in its approach and, sitting together, they form a yin-and-yang fit. Both display more metalcore aspects than anywhere else on the record and, at times, bring to mind Parkway Drive.
The Collapse of the Bitter End is an intensely personal record for the five people involved and is the cumulation of all the turmoil and uncertainty that comes with being in a band and dreaming to make it. Members have come and gone in the now-thirteen years of The Cartographer’s existence, and all will have left something of themselves in the DNA of the music.
The trials and tribulations can be heard in every track, but so can the victories over all the battles thrown in their path. Jay refers to this as the end of one era for The Cartographer and the beginning of another. Hopefully, with a settled line-up and a debut album now under their belts, the future may be a might less fraught and blue skies lay ahead.
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