Album Review: Carpenter Brut – Leather Teeth

The King of Synthwave is back… but not for very long.

Back in 2018, I wrote a bunch of reviews that I couldn’t publish anywhere. So I’m putting them here.

During the Bandcamp synthwave explosion around 2012 that shot artists like Perturbator and GosT into the spotlight, French electro-rocker Franck Hueso, aka Carpenter Brut, quickly established himself as king of the genre. With a mix of dark retro-synths, shock-rock guitars, and infectious beats, Carpenter Brut stood out with songs like “Disco Zombi Italia” and “Turbo Killer”.
However, Hueso is primarily a music producer, so new Carpenter Brut material was notoriously few and far between. It took until 2015 for Hueso to release a full album under the moniker – which was really just a compilation of three EPs – and his other material includes a single live album (which is absolutely worth your time).
In 2018, Hueso finally released Leather Teeth, the highly anticipated second album under the name Carpenter Brut. But while Teeth is a great new addition to the synthwave canon, it’s depressingly short.

Spanning eight songs, Teeth is a mostly instrumental trip through the synthwave genre. “Monday Hunt” is a synth-heavy headbanger; the title track is a similarly-paced, keyboard-tinged spooky metal song reminiscent of genre-mate GosT; “Sunday Lunch” a funky dance-track not unlike fellow retro-band TWRP; “Inferno Galore” is the kind of 80s-sci-fi-theme you might expect from Perturbator. For anyone just getting into the genre, Teeth is an excellent primer of what to expect.

Where the album really shines is in the vocal tracks. “Beware the Beast”, which features British black-metal/punk vocalist Mat McNerny, sounds like a New Wave band gone hair-metal. “Cheerleader Effect” – featuring Swedish metal singer Kristoffer Rygg of Ulver – is the more techno-inspired style of synthpop that originally gave the genre its name. “Cheerleader Effect” is the best song on the album, ranking with Trilogy’s “Turbo Killer” as one of Carpenter Brut’s most memorable songs.

Teeth’s only flaw is its length. At just over 30 minutes, it’s a nice little musical adventure, but disappointingly short considering how little material Carpenter Brut puts out.

But as EP IV, it’s great.

7/10

You can grab Leather Teeth right here.