Cartel explores their existential crisis in "Uninspired."

"You're gonna miss us when we're not around," Cartel frontman Will Pugh sings in "Uninspired," the first song from the band's forthcoming album, Collider. It sounds like he knows what he's talking about -- it's been a tumultuous couple of years for the Georgia pop-punk four piece, and for a while it seemed like there might not be any more music to come at all.

Listen to Cartel's "Uninspired" after the jump.

"Now I'm writing this song like I've got something to say," Pugh sings over a crunching guitars and whirling organ lines in the mid-tempo track, the prettily blended harmonies belying the hangdog tone of the lyrics. "What's the point of it all to come apart at the seams, if I'm never gonna be around to witness the dawn of my dreams?" We wonder that sometimes too, you guys.

The band, who are now releasing their music independently, seemed a bit lost without the aid of a label for a while, as they wrote on their Facebook page recently. Luckily for us, it sounds like everything really worked out for the best: "The unintentional discovery in that process was that there is an honesty that is imperative to the making of our music that is necessary to create the best possible sonic experience. That is to say, we’re at our best when we are not concerned with anything but making an album that we WANT to make. It was evident in Chroma. We strove for it despite the spectacle perceived in our self-titled album. We tried to find it again on Cycles. And now, with all other distractions and deterrences aside, we’ve found it again."

Hmmm...sounds like they were the opposite of "Uninspired" in the writing of the album, come to think of it.

"We're not giving up," the band harmonizes over a the bridge, a momentary break from the forward momentum of the guitars.

+ Listen to Cartel's "Uninspired."

Photo credit: Cartel