Carpenter Brut teams up with Seth Ickerman once again to create another visual and sonically pleasing masterpiece. If you haven’t already, check out the film “Blood Machines” by Seth Ickermen, and the music video to Carpenter Brut’s “Turbo Killer”. Both solid pieces of work. Watch the new Carpenter Brut video below:

† CARPENTER BRUT – SPEED OR PERISH † Directed by Seth Ickerman (Official Music Video)

Eternal Champion:
This song starts off with a trailing lead that intensifies over time, suddenly the bass is masked over by the guitar. By the time the synthesizer kicks in, it is obvious what is artificial and what’s real. This is the time to reminisce over 80s action movie vibes that we’ve long forgotten. 

Thunder Warriors:
I love the sinister thunderclap of this intro and how it ushers the guitar into a deadly vibe. Then the trajectory of the mood stops and the remainder of the track descends into an alternate personality. The theme seems to project an introduction of various elements, from guitar, to synth, to drum kicks. Once brought together, and the synchronicity is taken seriously, it strives to finish off with a stronger note than the initial chorus.

Coin Theif:
I’ll leave the introduction up to you to decipher, but what I really want to discuss is the crescendo and everything after 1:18. I firmly believe that this could have been its own track, and I would have been obsessed with it. The richness of the electronic elements provides a breath of fresh air, away from the start of the track. The electric guitar is slowly introduced back into the fray and makes for an enjoyable ride towards the end. 

Miracle Mission:
A slick, repetitive arpeggio and series of futuristic chimes grace our ears as we plunge into the next track, leading us into the trap of heavy guitar, drums, and bass. It’s almost like the electronic elements are under attack and forced to battle the 80’s hair metal nostalgia. There are parts of this track that seem to fall apart from the original theme, then get carried away into another.

Night Owl:
This next track smashes into the scene with fast-paced electronic chords followed by the thrashing energy of the guitar. Much of this track sounds to me like a boss fight. The cryptic variables within it prey upon the audible senses as an assertive means to grab your attention by the ears. There’s no need to take your foot off of the pedal, we’re deep within the confines of Dark Synthrock, and there’s no turning back.

The Runner:
Alongside the deafened choir raises a synthy cascade. Once the bass kicks in, our backs are against the wall and the progression of tempo hastens. The digitized down-tempo bridge is a playful and powerful method to keep both the guitar and synthesizer relevant rather than rivaling to claim their own territory.

Summoner:
Out of the vestiges of the darkest void emerges “Summoner”, which no doubt leaves me to assume that most of this album’s track titles reflect DnD references. The colorful melodies and enraged guitar chords synchronize into harmony over the punchy percussion. Laying waste to the litany of arpeggios and coordinated chimes.

Paladin:
Synthwave, Retrowave, and other sub-genres truly make it known that nostalgia can be masterfully applied and at times unknowingly refracted from a particular track as a mere reminder of something old but sounding new. “Call Me” by Blondie was the obvious motif used for this track. At about 1:00, I heard the lyrics alongside this particular chorus,
“Color me your color, baby
Color me your car
Color me your color, darling
I know who you are”
Listen for yourselves and let me know your thoughts. Is it a welcomed motif? Would a remix of “Call Me” be a badass Dark Synthrock cover? “Paladin” gives us a brief reflection of the possibility.

A club that is ethereal, church-like. Bad memories. Meeting the noise and a stranger, become confused to which is which in the darkness. Conjured from the cauldron of imagination to realisation, a confused state, conscious, just, speech slurred, eyes crossed against one another. A room of bad complexions and cheap smelling perfume.

Dance With The Dead take you on a journey through mutilated guitar riffs, pounding hard rocks drums, eerie spine tingling synths.

At times the soundtrack to an 80’s horror movie, as if scored for the entire catalogue of Stephen king’s work with a hair-rock aesthetic.

Grinding menacing arpegiators, always pushing you on-wards work both with and against the slick guitar licks to create a dangerous and unique dynamic. A sound that creates a constant rising friction, but rather than estrange it excites, drawing you deeper and deeper into their sound.

Be warned, the possible side effects from listening to this album are (minor complications) including double or blurred vision (for a few days), burning, stinging, ear drums, disorientation, euphoric tension,  and pounding agitated restless heartbeat.

Hear the album right here:

See, this wasn’t just any random show; it featured 3 of my absolute favorite artists in the genre; Perturbator, GosT, and Dan Terminus. Once the tour was announced, I knew I needed to make this pilgrimage. I knew it would be fulfilling, crazy, inspiring, and generally wonderful for my well-being and artistic pleasure. The decision to attend this tour was simple (one could say the decision was made for me), so it was just a matter of figuring out which city I wanted to visit. Vienna worked perfectly well for me since I had visited over 15 years ago and had always wanted to return.

Once everything was booked (the easy part), I just had to wait. But quickly on I thought to myself, “If I am going all the way over there to see this tour, I should make some sort of project around this.” Musical writing and covering shows is something I did before, so I decided I’d write about this in some shape or form. So I reached out to New Retro Wave about the opportunity, and began by interviewing GosT and Dan Terminus. I had the pleasure of spending over an hour on Skype with GosT discussing everything from inspirations, past show experiences (which just made me giddy with excitement and anticipation for this one!) and even awful 90’s metal fashion like Jncos (and their apparent resurgence).

Friday, March 25th. I arrive in Vienna after a night of very little sleep on my flight over from NYC. My day is a game of coffee drinking and tricks to play on myself to keep from falling asleep, but it turns out the general excitement of my journey makes it moot; too much energy! Before traveling I had befriended an Austrian fellow who was making the trip with some friends to see the show, so we decided to meet up at a venue called Escape Metal Corner where there would be a show after party the next night. Over the course of several hours we threw back beers, discussed how excited we were for the show, and also our general enthusiasm for this movement; Synthwave/Darkwave was all we could talk about. The fans dedication to this is pretty incredible, evidenced by my travels, as well as this guy’s dedication to the cause by making himself his own custom Perturbator jacket:

Homemade Perturbator Jacket!

“The whole outing felt very ritualistic; we were excited to be part of something special.”

Saturday the 26th: day of show. I go eat things and see things to kill time before I needed to show up. Eventually, I made my way, while listening to (naturally) my Darkwave warmup playlist, walking along the river to the Grelle Forelle venue, situated in an odd corner and pretty hidden from the street. Just finding the venue itself was a mini adventure. Since I was (graciously) granted guest list access and would be hanging with Perturbator, GosT, and Dan T backstage I got there very early, and was lucky enough to watch the setup and initial sound checks. The lighting and sound were pretty fucking killer, couldn’t wait to hear and see this live!

Perturbator warming up

Eventually I spotted Perturbator (James) and introduced myself. He (and everyone I ended up meeting) was extremely pleasant, fun, and all around a very nice guy. He took me backstage and introduced me to the rest of the crew, and we sat down to chat. We decided that we could do some interviews once Perturbator finished his soundcheck. I reassured them that the “boring” interview questions were out of the way, and had even gone out of my way to create some pretty ridiculous questions for laughs; they appreciated this and seemed to be quite tired of the regular old “who are your inspirations questions.” In any case, we had time to kill (a few hours) so we commenced beer drinking and listening to random music. Which led to …

No interview at all! Once we hit a certain threshold, we decided that an interview would be boring and instead, I should just write about hanging out with them, which turned out to be hilarious, incredible, fun, and frankly stupid. Turns out that I had a ton in common with all these guys from our collective love of heavier music, to random similarities in our youth to food choices. We went on a tear listening to some of our favorite nü metal artists like Limp Bizkit and Korn, cheesy indie rock, and hardcore. There was a lot of pseudo-moshing happening in that back room. The whole evening went something like this:

* Drink beers, talk about music

* Drink more beers, talk about music

* Tommy runs downstairs to watch a set

* Tommy runs back upstairs to have a beer and listen to more nu metal and shoot the shit

* Tommy runs back downstairs to see another set

* Essentially repeat the above for 4 hours

Overall, the sets themselves were all epic, high-energy, and full of spontaneity and passion; all of these guys put on an absolute clinic, winning over the crowds and creating an experience that is really hard to describe; it was unlike any show I had ever attended before and left me dizzy for weeks afterwards. It was literally very difficult for me to put into words exactly what these shows were like. I can only hope they can get over to the States more often now as I have now had just a taste and am already craving more. The bar has now been substantially raised for me for live music.

Oh, did I mention there was an after-party? There was indeed an after party. We made our way (Perturbator included) back to the Escape Metal Corner again for some additional DJs spinning Synthwave. Here the dancing and revelry continued with aplomb, as the place was packed with concertgoers and was no less packed when I finally decided to leave around 4:30 a.m. The energy from the concert spilled over into that smaller yet very loud venue, bodies jumping up and down, heads nodding, fists continuing to pump viciously.

Sunday the 27th, I sleep a lot, then spend my last few hours in Vienna by roaming around Zentralfriedhof, an amazing cemetery, with another fellow I had met at the show the night before. This has been a constant theme for me, meeting passionate, fun, nice, friendly people as I start getting more into this music and that’s something I could not say for many other genres I have gotten into. Both the fans and the artists themselves, which seems to really set Synthwave apart; its authenticity and sheer joy that it gives its creators and listeners.

I’ve already booked my next trip to see Carpenter Brut in the Ukraine in September. I am pretty sure that is also going to be insane. I cannot wait.

A new retro feel game with promising visuals and a killer synthwave soundtrack to complement, is in the making. presenting Power Drive 2000. Prepare for visual bliss!!

Make sure you support this game folks! Let’s help to meet the goal.

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2015/05/04/something-new-for-the-retro-scene-to-support/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2015/04/22/power-glove-ep-ii/ https://newretrowave.com/2015/04/22/power-glove-ep-ii/#respond Wed, 22 Apr 2015 20:42:06 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2015/04/22/2015422power-glove-ep-ii/ Get ready for what may be the most anticipated album of 2015!