3 out of 5

Label: No Quarter

Produced by: Carpenter Brut

It’s not that Carpenter Brut has lost any steps on CBIII, the, their appropriately titled third EP outing, it’s rather that they’re now in step with the scene. Franck Hueso’s synthwave project summarized all of the potential of the scene in that first EP and dropped a big ol’, club-sweaty mic on it, bloodying up the dancefloor quite distinctly. Their second outing rather improved on that by expanding the template of horror / sci-fi influences + industrial music to be more progressive and emotive as opposed to, maybe, strictly nostalgic. Carpenter Brut III shows traces of that same evolution, but it also feels a bit like running into the limits of the scene, that this may be the extent of what’s possible within some given definitions. As such, there’s a sense that Huesco gets close to something really exciting when those traces show up – particularly Paradise Warfare’s broad cycle from kitsch banger to arena-sized, heartfelt synths in its conclusion, and closer Invasion A.D. goes deeply cinematic, but not in an especially throwback way – it feels like a new film; the kind of works Repeated Viewing is doing. Elsewhere, though, opener Division Ruine feels like a review of things we’ve heard all over the scene – a totally solid rendition of that, but all the same – and by the time we get to the 80s vocalizations on the poppy Anarchy Road, it’s kinda like, oh, okay, I guess this is what we’re doing now.

It’s tough being at the forefront of / representing an entire scene (not to discredit all of the others toiling away in this vein, but Brut seems to be the starting- or touch-point for many), and CBIII by no means disappoints in terms of still representing it, just there are now others doing similar things just as well.