LIVE REVIEW: Carpenter Brut & HEALTH @ O2 Academy, Bristol
Two of the most daring and expansive acts in heavy electronic music team up in a night of crushing beats and huge riffs as synthwave pioneers CARPENTER BRUT and industrial titans HEALTH come together for a co-headline tour with support from death pop duo VOWWS.
Gloomy retro synths and moody vocals, LA-based and Australian-born duo VOWWS embody the goth and new-wave spirit of artists like Gary Numan (who appeared on their 2015 debut album The Great Sun) but with a cleaner, more modern approach to production. Fresh off a Halloween performance supporting DEADMAU5 with drummer Josh Freese, VOWWS open up the UK leg of HEALTH and CARPENTER BRUT’s joint tour.
Shrouded in fog and shadow the duo formed of guitarist Matt James and synth player Arezo Khanjani deliver a half hour of suitably slow and spooky synth-pop that draws equally from DURAN DURAN and Type O Negative. While their sound is impressively layered for a duo VOWWS struggle to make much of a connection with the audience, appearing only as silhouettes blasting out somber synths and dreary goth vocals to an almost motionless crowd.
Rating: 6/10
Pioneers of a horny industrial-based sub-genre that’s thrived online that the band have dubbed ‘cum metal’, HEALTH have quickly gone from a decade of underground reverence to the face of modern industrial metal. Rocketed into relevance through collaboration with acts as varied as JPEGMAFIA, ICE NINE KILLS, 100 GECS and GODFLESH as well as their contributions to GTA V, Cyberpunk 2077 and the recent Street Fighter movie, HEALTH bring their Conflict : Europe tour to Bristol’s O2 Academy.
Taking the stage as the first of the two co-headliners to A Cruel Angel’s Thesis from Neon Genesis Evangelion, the LA quartet, here joined by touring guitarist Justin McKinney, break into a back catalogue filled with almost two decades of crushing bass and angelic vocals. Songs like Feel Nothing and Antidote give vocalist and guitarist Jake Duzsik plenty of room to stretch his soft high-pitched voice while bassist and producer John Famiglietti (the face of the band also known as Johnny Health) provides a thoroughly intense synth-led bedrock for the rest of the band to build upon.
Bassist Johnny introduces the band’s single Major Crimes written for Cyberpunk 2077 with “anyone here like videogames? What about Japanese anime”, really summing up the band’s terminally online fanbase who they proceeded to pommel into the ground with earth-rattling bass stabs and overwhelming atmospheric guitars. Through intense strobe lights and a stage littered with synths and CRT TVs, HEALTH blast through hits like Future Of Hell and Ordinary Loss before closing out on the chugging DSM-V, making a case for the band as an extremely exciting band not only online but in meatspace as well.
Rating: 8/10
One of the biggest names in the dark, underground corners of synthwave, French producer and multi-instrumentalist Franck Heuso, under the name CARPENTER BRUT throws the sounds of 80s pop, B-movie slasher soundtracks and MESHUGGAH inspired progressive metal into a blender before running the resulting slurry through a filter of crushing modern industrial. Celebrating the release of his latest album Leather Temple with a huge European tour with HEALTH and another UK run early next year, CARPENTER BRUT represents the rare side of the electronic music spectrum that has to be seen live to be experienced in its full glory.
Refusing to be perceived by the audience through a layer of fog, CARPENTER BRUT manage to elegantly merge the worlds of European electronic music and contemporary progressive metal as they walk out to Major Threat before breaking into their biggest hit Roller Mobster. While mostly obscured by backlights, CARPENTER BRUT elevate their live set beyond a typical DJ performance with live guitars and drums backing retro synths and samples.
Despite being more synth driven than co-headliners HEALTH, CARPENTER BRUT manage to deliver just as heavy a set with just over an hour of intense pulsing rhythms and distorted guitars. This is a set for the dedicated fans and aficionados of all things heavy and ravey with those more interested in HEALTH’s more direct and friendly approach potentially becoming overwhelmed and exhausted by the constant onslaught of bass.
Closing out on a cover of the 80s megahit Maniac by Michael Sembello, CARPENTER BRUT deliver a bass-heavy party atmosphere that balances retro sleaze with contemporary progressive metal heft.
Rating: 7/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Bristol from Rowan Bruce here:
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