Fame and fuss are not his thing. For years, Franck B. Carpenter asked his face not be photographed in close-up during Carpenter Brut concerts. With his distinctive silhouette, mostly seen behind his gear, almost hiding behind his dark glasses and his beard, he has built a reputation as a discreet guy who couldn't care less about being in the spotlight, preferring to hide in the shadows of his project, in peace.
A few hours before his concert at the Motocultor Festival, we had the opportunity to ask him a few questions. We were given eighteen minutes, not a second more: he has a busy schedule of interviews, so we didn't want to disrupt his plans!
We know him to be outspoken, but we must admit that we weren't expecting such a pleasant interlocutor: time is short, so we skip the introductions (we know who he is, and he'll have forgotten who we are in a moment, so really, no fuss!) and start recording. We were able to start lifting the veil on his upcoming album, the third volume of the trilogy that began with Leather Teeth, telling the story of Bret Halford, and discuss his relationship with concerts and nostalgia. With his lively gaze, rapid-fire speech and sharp humour, Franck spoke with refreshing spontaneity and generosity, to the point that we would have loved to keep asking him questions for longer, as each of his answers lead to more talk. Next time, perhaps?
Your next tour is called The End Complete. We assume that this is the end of the trilogy that began with Leather Teeth. Since you wanted to tell your own slasher story, is it like all slasher stories, where they tell you it's the last episode, but there will be at least four more to follow?
Actually, part of me wants to stop doing concerts, it's such a technical nightmare... You know, I've always wanted to have a lot of gear, not just for the sake of having gear, but to put on a high-quality show, with lights, LED screens, etc. Prices have gone up so much that it's becoming increasingly difficult to stay equipped as we would like to, with prices doubling, tripling or quadrupling, while your selling price hasn't quadrupled. If you increase the cost of concert tickets too much, people won't come anymore because there's nothing to back it up, everything is going up except salaries. So there's a part of me that wants to stop touring. At the same time, I tell myself that it's cool too... I'm a bit like Michel Sardou, you know, who says ‘in 2006 it's over’, then ‘in 2010 it's over’, and in fact he never stops! I don't think we can just stop like that either, so it's tough. It's annoying because I want to put on shows where people enjoy what they see, but now you pay the same price as before but get half the gear... plus, sometimes you can lose money! So if you're going to lose money, what's the bottom line? You have less gear, you have no money... Are people going to save up all year to go to a big festival and see everyone, or are they going to go to venues to see bands? People do what they can afford. To answer your question about the title The End Complete, it's an open door that I'm leaving for myself, telling myself that if I don't come back, it was meant to be... and if I do come back, it means something else, and you'll see when the album comes out!
To what extent does scripting your music in this way lead you to ‘script’ the future of Carpenter Brut? In other words: are you the type to prepare your next albums in your head, and have you already thought about the end of your project?
No... I saw that Dave Mustaine announced his latest album and the end of Megadeth, and it takes guts to say, ‘Come on, I think it's over.’ People say that bands that are 72,000 years old and still performing on stage, like Mötley Crüe, are no good anymore, sing like crap, half of it is lip-synched, and all that... But even if it's also a question of money, I don't know if you can really give up your passion overnight just because you think you're too old, when you're never really old enough. I'm not old enough yet to have already planned the end of this project! I'm not sure what the future holds for me... maybe one day people will get fed up with Carpenter Brut because they'll want to listen to something else, and in that case, there'll be no point in me continuing. But I think there'll always be two or three guys who'll love it. Let's take things in order with the release of the album.
There is a cliché that in trilogies, the second instalment is always the darkest. Where are you taking us with the third one? Can you tell us about it?
Yes! I'm taking you to 2077. It's like Cyberpunk 2077, but also because I was born in 1977 and in 2077, I'll be 100 years old. Well, I'll never actually be that old, but I could have been! So I set the action around that time, which is also a nod to the game I like and play quite a bit, which takes place in a totalitarian world. It's also a reference to George A. Romero's film, the fourth one with zombies who are starting to become aware of who they are, Land Of The Dead. I was inspired by that, but set it in a futuristic world.
It's funny because in slasher series there always comes a moment when the guy becomes an undead creature who goes into space or something like that, like Jason Voorhees in one of the Friday the 13th, for example...
Oh, I haven't seen that one! If you ask me, once there are more than two or three films, I wonder if it's really worth bothering to watch them! I saw that the Friday the 13th films were getting ridiculous. It can be funny, but at some point, do you really have time to laugh about it? There are so many good films to watch... No, Bret Halford isn't a zombie who goes into space. In fact, he's still alive in 2077 because he was found in a cold room, since at the end of Leather Terror he's locked in a cold room.
Yes, just like Jason Voorhees at the beginning of Jason X! Can you tell us about the musical direction now?
It will be 100% instrumental, no guest appearances, more electronica... I wouldn't say it's darker, but people tell me it's more danceable, more ‘la la la’: there will be more parts you can sing in the shower. I like it, it's not mixed yet but I finished composing it a day or two ago, and I'm happy with it. I'm not the only one judging it, so I hope to get lots of little stars in the magazines.
We don't use stars here!
Oh, how do you do it then? Grades like at school, or coloured circles?
No, not that either. You have to read everything!
Oh no, that's rubbish! I just look at the grade at the end!
There's a paradox that I find interesting: you started releasing music at around the same time as Perturbator or, in a completely different vein, Ghost. There was a kind of ‘getting metalheads to dance’ attitude and making them accept glitter and kitsch again, in a way, with satanic symbols and retro aesthetics. Over time, your music has become darker and more violent, and Perturbator has also become quite a bit darker. Do you have any thoughts on this evolution?
As far as I'm concerned, I made Leather Teeth the way I did in 2018 because of the 2015 attacks at the Bataclan. I wasn't into violence, so I wondered what musical period people enjoyed, when they still partied to metal. For me, it was glam, with Mötley Crüe, for example, and I started from there: the story of a kid in love with a cheerleader. It had to follow a story with, at some point, the idea of revenge, the idea of a serial killer... it went with the period. Right now, even though I try not to get political with Carpenter Brut because it's nobody's business but mine, I'm more in a mood where I wanted to put in two or three capsules about the extremes currently on Earth. You see, as soon as I start talking about politics, it's turning into shit!
By “extreme,” I mean people from all sides, not necessarily political, those who behave like jerks, those who are aggressive toward everyone, etc. I tried to take a more global view of what the world was like, namely a kind of competition between those I call the “powerful” in the album. These are ultra-billionaires like Elon Musk, for example. They have a certain kind of talent, but they also become completely megalomaniacal and insane because they're above everyone else with not much to stop them. What's the next step with these people? At first, as a geek, you love it and you say, “Wow, Teslas are cool!” And then when you see what the guy becomes... first of all, he wasted an idea that was killer, and on top of that, it turned into a big pile of shit! But what does a big pile of shit become with the biggest fortune in the world? People like it when things are polarized, but in life I'm a much more measured person!
Does that mean that, despite this highly scripted universe, you manage to put a little bit of yourself and your emotions into this project?
Well, I've never been a serial killer... yet! But you know, every time you tell a story, it's inevitably a story that touches you in some way. Either the story reminds you of a movie you liked when you were a kid, or it raises questions you have about your family or your kids... Every artist always has something to say, and it's often related to a pleasure or a fear. Other than that, there's not much else to say: if the guy just tells you that he came to Brittany and filled up with gas on the road... everyone gets bored! There has to be something personal about it, something that comes from the gut or the heart when you tell a story.
Your world is heavily influenced by Hollywood fantasy. Have you ever imagined what it would be like if you transposed it to France?
That would be ridiculous! What French science fiction or action films from the 1980s have made an impression on us? Apart from The Cabbage Soup or Terminus with Johnny Hallyday? Because that's where my world is! There's nothing, so it's impossible!
Are you a nostalgic person?
I was when I started to see the world going to shit, until I reached an age where I stopped giving a damn! Too bad for you, in fact, if you're stupid! It's neither my fault nor my problem. Now I'm more into doing my own thing in my corner. When you see people on TikTok doing trends where they burn their skin to make it look like they're tanned... listen, you're going to die and it's your fault, not mine! At first you still think you can change things, but there are too many idiots on earth, we'll never succeed.
So your nostalgia isn't really artistic?
There is some nostalgia because I see that the quality of films is quite disappointing... and at the same time I tell myself that for every good Back to the Future or Robocop, there were surely a lot of rubbish films at the time. We tend to glorify what we want to remember and forget the rest. There are still films and series that I love, like 1883, which I thought was fantastic and blew me away, or, in a different style, Succession on HBO, which I loved, so there are still some great things out there. Nostalgia can mean not being able to find the films you loved when you were young, but at the same time, we get older, we move on in life, and the people making films now are younger than me and don't have the same references. You can't always do the same thing, and anyway, the old films haven't disappeared, you can still watch them. I just think that politically speaking, we're in a bit of a complicated period, which I don't really like.
Younger generations, who are nostalgic for the 90s and 2000s, are coming to the fore. Do you ever think about it and tell yourself that the 80s are going to become a thing of the past for old people?
Sure! I don't just listen to music from the 80s, but also from the 90s and 2000s... I realised, like everyone else, that everything that came out in the 2000s was rubbish! In 1991, there was Metallica's Black Album, Pearl Jam's Ten and Nirvana's Nevermind... Compared to that, the 2000s were shitty! After that, it's up to me to make sure I don't get stuck in the same rut. Setting the story in the future allows me to make a little musical leap. I've never been into purely 80s music with the same drum sounds, etc. I was inspired by the period, but it's more of a feeling. Like anything else, it'll end up becoming old-fashioned and cheesy!
A few years ago, your world seemed more grounded in a kind of reality, with live projections of images of suburbs or palm trees, for example. Lately, between the more abstract live visuals and the quasi-religious connotations of some of Leather Terror's tracks, there seems to be an almost mystical trend...
When it comes to visuals, it all depends on who I have on hand to do them. Musically, you'll see on the latest one, you won't be disappointed! Or maybe you will, actually! That aspect that you find a bit religious is even more present because of the position of this billionaire who thinks he's a bit like God. When I played the rather grandiose intro to a friend, he said to me ‘You've got a big head!’ but it's not me, it's the guy I'm talking about in the story. I don't know, I didn't see it that way at all. I wanted a glam vibe for Leather Teeth, industrial metal for Leather Terror and electronica for the third album.
Speaking of industrial music, every time I've seen you live, you've had an opening act that I'm a fan of (Youth Code, Horskh, Sierra Veins, Ho99o9 and Perturbator)... How familiar are you with that scene?
It's not a scene I follow, nor is it a genre I've listened to much. When we toured with Ministry in the United States, even though I was familiar with some of the sounds, I was always amazed by the simplicity of the songs, even though they can last nine hours! Typically with Ministry, you have a riff and it goes on and on and on... at first it's cool, then at some point you get bored, and then you're in a trance. I've always loved that ultra-intense side with a single riff and a voice that's always a bit saturated. I listened to Treponem Pal a bit back then, the old stuff, but it's not really a scene I know, no. I go by the sound, rather than knowing all the bands and all their albums. On the other hand, I saw Nine Inch Nails in Paris last July and I got a nuclear beating!
You have a reputation for being quite discreet, and during live performances, the audience's attention is focused more on the visuals being projected. Deep down, do you enjoy performing on stage?
Not really... well, I like it because people are happy, but I don't feel like a showman at all, you know. I'm not even a real musician, unlike the drummer and guitarist who accompany me! It takes me five hours to learn my parts... it's not really something I enjoy, but at the same time we tour well, we do great shows and people are happy. I'm still touring for those who want to see me, but if it were up to me, I'd stay at home. It's really not something I'm comfortable with.
But we can see you there, when you come to the front of the stage to throw beach balls and direct the audience with a few gestures: aren't you actually an entertainer in spite of yourself?
It's because I like to have fun, because I don't really take Carpenter Brut seriously either. That's why I'm here, otherwise I'd stop. What I enjoy is seeing people having fun. So I keep going, even though I could make music without doing concerts. But I like to mess around, party and enjoy myself, I could even be a bit of a douchebag sometimes! Life goes by fast and if you spend it sulking, you're wasting your time. Have fun however you can!
