Artist

Carpenter Brut

Franck Hueso’s electro rock/synthwave project

Poitiers, France · b. 1977

Carpenter Brut is a musician from Poitiers, France, active since 1977. Their discography on Gatefold includes 9 records.

Start your shelf →Open in app

Albums tracked

In collections

1977

Since

Biography

Franck Hueso spent years behind a mixing console for French metal bands like Deathspell Omega and Hacride before he ever touched a synthesizer for this project. He wasn't some club kid trying to make people dance. He was a studio engineer obsessed with the crunch of a high-gain guitar amp and the mechanical precision of a drum machine. That background is why the early EPs sound like they're trying to kick your teeth in. He treated the synth leads like a lead guitarist from the Sunset Strip, ignoring the polite, airy textures of French touch for something much uglier. The project went from a bedroom studio mystery to a full-blown touring circus with a live drummer and guitarist because the music was too heavy for a laptop set. Hueso understands that synthwave is a dead end if it's just nostalgia for a neon 80s that never existed. He leans into the trashy, sleazy side of hair metal and slasher soundtracks, using high-production gloss to mask the fact that he's essentially making heavy metal records without the Marshall stacks. It’s loud, it’s obnoxious, and it’s meticulously engineered to sound like a VHS tape found in a dumpster behind a strip club.

Bio from The Clerk

The Arc of Carpenter Brut

The pivots — what forced Carpenter Brut to reinvent.

The Trilogy Era
Hueso released three EPs between 2012 and 2015 that functioned as a singular mission statement before he ever attempted a full album. These tracks were built on a foundation of distorted bass lines and aggressive compression that bridged the gap between the French electronic scene and the underground metal world. You can hear his engineering background in the way the kick drum punches through the dense wall of synths, a technique more common in death metal production than house music. This period peaked with 'Turbo Killer,' a track that proved the project could handle anthemic melodies without losing its jagged, industrial edge.
The Leather Saga
Starting with 2018's Leather Teeth, Hueso shifted away from the dark club atmosphere and leaned hard into a fictional 80s slasher movie narrative. He swapped out some of the grittier industrial textures for the bright, soaring hooks of hair metal, even bringing in guest vocalists like Mat McNerney and later Gavin Rossdale to sell the arena-rock fantasy. The production became cleaner and more cinematic, moving from the basement to the stadium. By the time Leather Terror dropped in 2022, the project had fully embraced its identity as a heavy metal opera disguised as an electronic record.

Influences

John Carpenter — Hueso took half his name from the director and has cited the 'Halloween' and 'Escape from New York' scores as his primary blueprint. You hear it in the repetitive, minimalist minor-key synth motifs that build tension before the drums kick in. It’s the DNA of the entire project.
Justice — Hueso has pointed to their debut album '†' as the record that showed him electronic music could be as heavy as metal. He adopted their signature 'over-compressed' sound, where the audio feels like it's fighting to breathe under the weight of the distortion. It’s that French electro-house grit applied to a darker palette.
Iron Maiden — Hueso frequently mentions them in interviews regarding his approach to melody and the 'Leather Teeth' era's visual aesthetic. The gallop in his sequencing often mirrors Steve Harris’s bass lines. He writes synth parts that are meant to be air-guitared to, not just danced to.
Daft Punk — The influence comes specifically from the 'Discovery' era and their use of 70s and 80s pop tropes. Hueso takes their obsession with production polish and applies it to much darker, more aggressive source material. He’s looking for that same level of earworm hook, just buried in filth.
Perturbator — While often peers, James Kent (Perturbator) was an early associate and Hueso mixed the album 'Dangerous Days.' That technical involvement helped define the 'darksynth' sound before Hueso's own project blew up. The two shared a metal-to-electronic pipeline that set the standard for the French scene.