FM Premiere
Candi Carpenter turns spiritual deconstruction into a connected music-and-film experience on their new alt-rock EP, Reincarnation.
The six-track project moves across different genres and visual realities, exploring toxic religion, identity, sexuality, capitalism and the fear of existing inside a human body.
Rather than treating those themes as separate songs, Carpenter links them through a short film described as a “presently-apocalyptic rock opera”.
In one lifetime, we are many different people: different timelines, different outcomes, alternate realities. I believe in reincarnation because I’m a different person every single day.
Each track receives its own video, with all six chapters forming one continuous narrative. Working with an independent budget, Carpenter and a team of friends constructed a complete trash dump inside a warehouse before filming the zombie-filled project over one week.
The intentionally rough setting becomes part of its language: a “filthy rainbow” of changing colours, blunt symbolism and handmade world-building. Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go’s also appears in the film.
That multidisciplinary approach expands Carpenter’s role beyond singer-songwriter and producer into directing, acting and production design. The concept carries forward the darker alternative world introduced on their 2024 album Demonology, while pushing its visual scale further.
This project gave me the chance not only to challenge myself musically but also to grow as a director, actor, and world-builder.
The title track opens with identity in constant motion, while Little Freak connects capitalism, consumption and disposability. The Fear of Being Human Remains confronts consciousness itself, and Inside the Simulation questions reality through the lingering fear of eternal punishment.
Biblically Accurate Angel reframes sexuality and religious shame, before American God rejects obedience and inherited social roles with the closing declaration: I am my own church.
Raised in a Christian Missionary Alliance pastor’s family, Carpenter began as a gospel performer before touring with Grand Ole Opry artists, entering country music and eventually making their own Opry debut. Reincarnation repurposes that history, using modern independent production and connected visual storytelling to imagine what might exist beyond it.
This EP was my chance to try on the genres I wasn’t allowed to explore growing up in the church.
Carpenter will take the project on a co-headlining US tour with Moselle this autumn, beginning with an EP release show in Nashville on 12 September.
With Reincarnation, Carpenter is not simply announcing six songs. They are constructing an alternative belief system from sound, performance and cinema; then inviting listeners to step inside it.