Cartel: Line Out.

Cartel launch the self-titled disc at the Waterloo Hotel on Friday.

Back in 1995, a group of bored students put together a band. That band has survived in varying forms now for seven years, and after endless gigs, a change of name and an opening slot on the recent M-One festival, Cartel are about to launch their debut CD.

“It’s finally ready,” enthuses guitarist Michael Farrar. “It’s been two years of work. The first track on there was recorded November 2000. A couple of them were done there. The second lot were done in January this year. It’s been a long year, and it’s finally out.”

Despite the recording being put together in such a way, the final result is six cohesive tracks of perfectly meshed metal.

“A lot of it was down to the mastering, but a lot of the songs were written around the same time. It wasn’t that easy, and we weren’t sure how to run it together.”

Did you expect it all to fit together so well after mastering?

“Actually, I was a bit dubious about the whole mastering process. We’d never done it before, so I actually drove down to Sydney for it. We’re an independent act, and with the money involved in mastering I wanted to go and see how it was done. I spent a few days in Sydney, and it only took about an hour per track, but it was unbelievable.”

Originally performing under the moniker Out Of Line, the band moved away from their earlier punkier sounds towards their current musical direction.

“The change kind of happened with the change of direction. We’d been doing the punk thing for four or five years, around the Gabba and the Railway. Over time, we figured out our vocalist could do much better if we slowed it up a bit and gave him more freedom. It was fun for me to, because I came from a more metal background. The name change was on the cards for a while, because we had changed out style so much over a couple of years.”

“Eventually, when Michael Luke, who was a founding member of the band, rejoined the band mid this year we thought, now it’s time to change the name. We changed it just before the first gig he did back in the line up.”