Editor's note: this review was written by Anthony DiGiacomo, long time friend and contributor to Heavy Blog!
Carpenter Brut, to me and maybe to many others, is one of the pioneers of the synthwave genre. His album Trilogy still stands above most releases in the genre in the decade plus since its release in 2015; as both an homage to an era or synth music long past and the modern trappings of metal as whole. It has an energy that has never been matched by his contemporaries; a fire that felt honest and out to say something, with a kind of rawness that is unexpected in a genre based around wholly synthetic instruments. Maybe it was his amateur, for the time, mixing ability leading to unique uses of distortion and clipping, but it's a sound that Carpenter Brut did not end up carrying on to future releases. Now in 2026, Carpenter Brut has found that same kind of energy in a more concise package with Leather Temple which , according to Franck Hueso himself, is the finale of the "Leather" trilogy.
Before I go on with reviewing the content of this album, I want to openly address the fact that Franck has purportedly been involved with the production side of bands that are notoriously on the NSBM side of music. I think this point must not be overlooked when discussing his music. Whether or not this was simply him doing a job for money or because he shared opinions with the artist has never been fully disclosed publicly as far as I know, but it's a point I did not want to gloss over given the severity of the beliefs those artists stand for. I should also mention the very important point of how “problematic”, nostalgia-drenched, and retro-futuristic media plays into fascism in the modern era. Understanding when it is being used in those ways, and how it is used by people who espouse those ideals is critically important. I don't necessarily think that Carpenter Brut or other synthwave artists are wholly pushing those ideals, but bad actors will often not shy away from utilizing art from people that will fit their message.
Now, the topic at hand: Leather Temple. Brut made the conscious decision to make this album entirely instrumental, which he spoke about in recent interviews, as a kind of slight to modern metal being so heavily vocal centric almost in the way pop music is. It's a move I fully back. Brut's early work had a fire that I never found outside of his work, and I truly feel that flame is back with Leather Temple. The title track could have easily been featured in one of the recent Doom games in place of Mick Gordon's titanic creation of a new genre of metal. The following track, "She Rules The Ruins", builds quickly to the sort of vibe you'd imagine driving 100 miles per hour down a Miami freeway in the 80s to with neon signs passing in the rearview. The themes of the album, whether heavy or nostalgic, feel honest, harkening back to his own past catalog while not feeling like retread territory.
That general tenor carries through the following tracks, keeping the tempo and energy high, something that I felt was missing from the previous Leather albums that Trilogy had in spades. "Start Your Engines" could have been used in a chase scene in a better Tron movie than Ares. The powerfully memorable melodies and the "start your engines, mother fuckers" build up hit like the most intense moment of any action movie you've seen in the last few decades.
The next two tracks bring things down a notch and help set a more restrained and dark mood before picking right back up with "The Misfits / The Rebels", taking off quickly into a bombastic synth riff that feels more metal than synthwave. The heavily distorted saw waves pummel your ears in a way that no one else in the genre has been able to match. This is the sound I fell in love with when I first discovered Carpenter Brut all those years ago. As I had stated earlier, the original Trilogy album was overly distorted and so intensely loud it still pushes more LUFS than most of the loudest modern metal releases. That sound was unique at the time and had a special kind of ugliness to it that truly set Brut apart from others in the genre. It's clear that, in the years since then, he has learned how to rein in that kind of mixing and mastering methodologies to make something much more professional and clean sounding while still bringing back some of the distorted power Trilogy had.
Synthwave has long been a genre that can have a tendency to get stale fast. How many times can you hear the same four on the floor style rhythm with a delayed and modulated synth behind it playing a nostalgic sounding melody? This is something that Leather Temple breaks from entirely, and is largely the sound that defined Brut from the beginning, distorted saw wave synths and the touch of a real drummer performing the drum parts. The album's penultimate track, "Speed or Perish", is a trip from start to finish. Utilizing a classic organ sound, the track drives home a hero’s journey vibe of a story coming to a close. High energy pedal tone riffs, alongside one of the few vocalized parts on the album, precede another organ section, seemingly portraying a protagonist being beat down only to get back up to give one final push toward victory.
The final vocalized "Engage!" launches into the most fiery moment of the entire album featuring double kick sections reminiscent of “proper” metal albums. This entire section is worth the wait to get to. "The End Complete" rounds Leather Temple out in a wonderfully cinematic ending credits way, bringing things to a close before it overstays its welcome. You can almost envision the credits rolling after watching a neon drenched retro-futuristic car chase movie for the duration of this track.
A wonderfully somber and fitting end to an album I never thought Brut would produce given the two albums that preceded it closes out Leather Temple. This album proves one thing that I had thought for many years: Carpenter Brut is one of the stand out artists of synthwave as a whole. His use of influences from metal give him an edge that no one else in the genre has come close to in the decade plus he's been releasing music and Leather Temple firmly proves that he hasn't lost that edge; rather he's been slowly refining it to a point that makes this release some of his best work to date.