I’ve been on the Carpenter Brut train ever since I was pulled into the world of the top-down Hot Line Miami 2 video game franchise, backed up by other dark synthwave wizards like Perturbator and Com Truise, but it wasn’t until I heard the Carpenterbrutlive album that I became a Brut fanatic. I still throw that album on late-night drives and gym excursions.
For the uninitiated, Carpenter Brut is fronted by France’s Franck Hueso, who helped lead the dark ’80s synthwave comeback back in the 2010s, but he prefers to keep the horror mythos and remain in anonymity and let his gargantuan dark synth sound do the talking. It’s a sound that honours horror soundtracks, metal, and the electronic progenitors of the 70s and 80s. There’s always some sort of loose concept to the albums, like a cybernetic serial killer, or with this one set in the fictional Midwichopolis in the year 2077, where our heroes “Bret Halford (a mashup of Poison lead singer/Rock of Love beau Bret Michaels and Judas Priest singer Rob Halford) and Lita Connor (a combination of former Runaways guitarist Lita Ford and Terminator ass-kicker Sarah Connor) battle the supervillain Iron Tusk.”
The concept is always hoaky, and sounds ripped from a John Carpenter film, and it’s part of the allure. But the music is always speed-inducing and heavy on the thundering synths, shaking you out of sublimation during a track like “Major Threat.” The title track is easily the most world-ending and sinister, with Djent-esque guitars that actually remind me of Mick Gordon’s work in the DOOM ETERNAL video game. It’s clearly an homage, one master paying his respects to another’s work. It’s also the most explosive song on the album, leaving me waiting for more of this vibe. Instead, we get the anthemic and breakneck “She Rules the Ruins,” and the shimmering “Neon Requiem.” It’s all very classic Carpenter Brut, especially with “The Misfits/ The Rebels,” which will no doubt inspire drunken moshing just as the “GUILTY!” vocal chant makes itself known—when Carpenter Brut takes the stage with HEALTH later this month. Leather Temple is everything you’d expect from Carpenter Brut’s ending to the Leather trilogy, throwing a few curveballs and magnetic horns your way.
