Carpenter Brut
With synthwave dominating the underground, we hopped over to France for an exclusive audience with its biggest – and most mysterious – name. here’s why Carpenter Brut has everyone raving
Death metal fanatics are reaching for the glo-sticks. We pop to France to throw shapes
with the biggest name in synthwave.
Imetalt’s 11pm on a cold, pissing-it-down Sunday night in early march, but rather than being tucked up in bed with a cup of hot chocolate and a Netflix binge, Hammer is wedged in between two animated dudes in death
t-shirts, in the middle of a packedout club, watching one of the most hyped and talked-about underground artists of the last few years. this isn’t an entirely unusual situation for any self-respecting metal journalist, of course – or, you’d imagine, the hundreds of metal fans in attendance tonight. But, while the reams of black shirts with indecipherable logos, the numerous mosh pits that break out, the horns thrown and the sheer amount of ink, dyed hair and beardiness flying around the place all make us feel right at home, what’s happening on stage is something else entirely. Because while for all intents and purposes, this looks and feels like a metal gig, the fact is that it really isn’t a metal gig. actually, it’s dance music on that stage. and everyone is losing their god damn minds.
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Carpenter Brut – the biggest player and leading light in the underground-sweeping monolith that is synthwave. “It’s been the first time I’ve seen black metal fans singing and dancing to Maniac from Flashdance,” laughs the man himself when we sit down with him before the show. “It’s cool!”
We’ve flown out to montpellier, France – a pretty, modest city of around 250,000 people 10km inland from the South coast – to not only to see Carpenter Brut in his homeland, but get a first-hand taste of why his music has got metalheads around the world putting down their studded wristbands and picking up their glo-sticks. today, he plays another packed-out show of synth-laden, hightempo electro-rock bangers on a tour that will fly across europe and the US, including stops at notable venues such as london’s Koko, New York’s Irving Plaza and Paris’s 3,000-capacity olympia. he has streams and video views in the millions, supported Ghost across the US and, these days, is packing visuals that look like they belong at a Chemical Brothers gig. all done, it should be said, while remaining almost completely anonymous: rarely doing interviews, never doing photoshoots and requesting that his real name be withheld in the public domain. In fact, even getting this chat off the ground proved a difficult task, with management having to stress rules surrounding shooting the show and going to great lengths to make sure we wouldn’t stride too far into Carpenter’s private life in the interview itself. It’s all lead to him becoming something of a cult figure in the underground.