Their formal collaboration began when John and Cody started jamming in a basement studio, pausing at times to play video games. As recording progressed, they were joined by Davies, by then a veteran of such rock acts as Year Long Disaster and Karma to Burn.
Their recordings eventually found their way to Caleb Braaten, founder of the Brooklyn indie label Sacred Bones. “I was cautiously excited,” said Braaten, who grew up watching Carpenter films. “Electronic movie scores have become very important in the culture, and John is the master at that. But recent electronic music movements, like cold wave, also owe a huge debt to him.”
Carpenter’s first album with the label, “Lost Themes,” arrived in 2015; the next year, he and his group hit the road for nearly 40 live dates, playing new tunes, as well as some of his best-known film scores. “The very first show, I was scared,” Carpenter said. “And then, maybe 30 seconds into being up there, I thought, ‘This is the greatest. There’s nothing like this.’”
Carpenter doesn’t read or write music, instead relying on improvisation. Even when he’s in his home recording studio, he’s still very much directing: While writing music for “Cathedral,” he’d talk through the graphic novel’s story line in the studio, searching for sounds that fit the scenes in his head. “John would say something like, ‘OK, we’re going to have our main character fight the dark lord, so we need a heavy riff right here,’” Davies recalled. “And it starts coming out that way, based on the images that he’s describing to us.”
The resulting songs are some of the group’s most aggressive, owing to the three musicians’ shared love for Metallica. The stomping “Primeval” features gnarled guitar lines, while “Lord of the Underground” combines thrash-rock fury and ghostly synth lines.
