4 out of 5

Label: No Quarter

Produced by: Carpenter Brut

Sure, go do your concept album, or make your soundtrack for an imagined film. Admirable. Or… go craft a narrative, tell the story with your music, and then make a mini-movie via music videos for every song. While I’m not a big fan of external info being “necessary” to enjoy a piece of art – and that’s essentially what holds Carpenter Brut’s 80s revenge-slasher fantasy tale “Leather Teeth” from being a full-on home run – Brut and his crew’s application of the artist’s synthwave gothicness to an 80s hair metal soundtrack is, firstly, a good time with plenty of riffs, and then earns an absolute extra nod of appreciation via the additional media effort. “Leather Teeth,” on its own, is kind of overkill, but that’s how it makes sense: the ridiculous story told moves past the typical nerd-takes-murderous-vengeance-on-his-perpetrators slash-fest structure by having said nerd (“Bret Halford”) thereafter become the lead singer of an uber-popular metal group, who seemingly get to rise to fame pretty much because Bret overcame his bullying with, er, vicious murder. The videos spot-tell this story with copious fast cut shots of 80s horror stuff like some Jon Mikl Thor movies and whatever other vicious beheadings could be found, plus maybe some shots of Brut’s own design, and then lots of boobs and panties, and here you can see I’m already talking quite a bit about the media and not the music. That’s the rub: I got invested.

But before I knew there was this extra layer in which to invest, we just have the music, which… doesn’t tell that story. There are two vocal hair metal tracks (with fuzzed-up industrial disco beats, mind you) that are as generic as can be – meaning no narrative – and there’s nothing in the song titles to really spell this out. Even in terms of tone, the opening of the “movie” kind of makes sense – the propulsive riffing of the title track, which stands with any single on Trilogy; a bit of boppy glam (and vocals) on Cheerleader Effect; darker, more muscley stuff on Sunday Lunch – but thereafter there’s really no ebb and flow: it’s all flow. If we ditch the story completely, this makes for, on one hand, an exciting listen; on the other, I feel like it becomes pretty hard to discern song from song as you go along.

As for the initial criticism that this strayed pretty far from previous Brut, I found it to be right in line with the clubbier stuff from Trilogy, of which there was already plenty. My ears maybe aren’t as attuned to this genre as others’, but this sounded like a logical next step to me. It’s all-singles vibe, though, is a bit much if listened to without the supplementary visuals. Add those in, though, and it’s juvenile, but nonetheless a fun sensory assault.