Maniac

Where "Beware the Beast" threatens, "Maniac" delivers. The tempo is relentless from the first beat — a mechanized pulse that recalls the Terminator soundtracks that clearly haunt Carpenter Brut's musical imagination, but pushed harder, faster, more unhinged. The synth work here is melodically sharp, almost gleeful in its aggression, bright leads skittering over a dense, compressed low end that physically pressures the chest at volume. There's a cinematic quality to the arrangement, with dynamics that suggest a chase sequence or a climactic confrontation — the track has narrative arcs even without words, rising to peaks that feel earned and crashing into valleys that reload the tension. This sits squarely in the French synthwave tradition that also produced Perturbator and Kavinsky, but Brut's production has an almost punk-like disregard for subtlety that separates him from his peers. The instrumentation is entirely synthetic yet feels visceral and physical in a way that much electronic music fails to achieve. "Maniac" is music for the gym at its most obvious, but more honestly it's music for any moment when you need to override your nervous system — when the rational mind needs to get out of the way and let something older take the wheel. It's been adopted by workout culture, gaming montages, and adrenaline sports for good reason: it chemically induces a state.