Oh, that´s not too hard. The art of enjoying Brutes is tied to your understanding of the FURY bar (FURY is an abbreviation for "Face Ur Reaper, Yeah!"). As soon as you learn to care for this fragile thing called fury you will see the light.
Brutes can be a pain before Stamina, but after that (or any other way to make your endurance management work) all you have to do is run around fast and SMASH things until there is nothing left. Some sets offer powers that let you drain your enemies´ endurance, other brutes will only see their true potential when accompanied by a kinetic corruptor. (Awesome duo!)
Look at the fury bar and do anything to keep it as close as possible to 100%. Your endurance is starting to plummet? Oh, come on you can still do this one spawn, you will one-shot them anyway. Your health bar is nearing red? What are you? A coward? Go, get 'em!
To play a brute well you must be completely reckless. The closer you come to something like a blood rush, the more you will enjoy playing a brute.
(And if it helps: Don´t choose your targets with surgical precision. You are no scalpel, you are the axe. Try attacking the biggest threat first, but if you don´t know which one is the biggest threat don´t hesitate and hit anything, the faster the biggest threat will fall once you get to him. Keep your ways between fights as short as possible. Don´t run around because a corruptor is attacked by a minion. He can probably take care of it or bring the mob to you if he is smart. Kill. Em. All.)
If it has eyes, you can blind it, if it has blood, you can make it bleed, if it has a mouth, you can make it scream.
What Sin said!
Fury is your be all and end all. You'll do anything to keep it high. This is often called 'Brute-Lock' and can become this overpowering, all-encompassing desire to attack the next mob.
Defiant 50's
Many and varied!
@Miss Chief
Exactly, there is no science to it just SMASH!! and ignore the blue and green bars they take your atention away from the fury 
My blue bar is mostly black anyway, and the green bar flashes green and black. All the fun of bruting.
Take fire as a primary and instead of thinking "Which one shall I attack first?" think "Which ones are over the AoE cap?" cause you'll have to ST them after
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
Main tip to starting a brute: Don't use toggles before stamina unless you really need them. That will allow you to have more endurance, which means more continous SMASH, which means more fury, which means more powerful SMASH!
Indeed. A SMASHED enemy deals no damage, much better than a sheild. (exept mez - if your held your fury drops 
)
depending on the soft control in your primary, you may want a toggle until your rage is up high and the fights dont really last long enough to take too much damage.
Update. Just had my first night of Brute therapy. By weird chance, I ran into an alt of Herculon, who showed me the way. Seriously. It was random that I ended up being a duo with his new brute.
I have to confess I chose Dark/Dark because of the weird toys that come later. But, in the spirit of this thread I did not buy the Fear power. As you all have pointed out, it has no SMASH. Now that I've declared my build, any other advice to share as Brute Therapy continues?
By the way I think I'm starting to figure out fury. At level 2 I just started running like a madman across mercy with the red at about 75 percent most of the time. Aside from rapid leveling, I was shocked at the one-hit murders that kept going on before me. It just seems so very wrong. But great. Thanks for the advice guys. And if you're on Defiant look up "Sybis" sometime.
-jared
Dark/Dark is quite simply "damn sexy" on a brute!
I love mine. I have to near enough get her killed for the sake of Fury sometimes, then pop dark regen and off she goes!
Near Death Experiences ftw all the way and Soul Transfer is good just in case.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
I choose fire/dark because /dark is often living on the edge and fun and fire got a big graphics boost with I6 (thanks to particals) and I wanted to see it.
My elec/Fire exists because I wanted to try a /fire and elec was new at the time. Trying to find something other than Fire/ for AoEs it seemed the only choice.
I also have a Stone/EA which is another kind of SMASH, involves less drawing agro and more running around like an idiot (thus a more normal brute I suppose as my other two both use the enemies alpha strike to get full fury)
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
I've got to get you to explain that....enemy alpha strike? You call in air support?
Uuuuhm, alpha strike is the phrase commonly used for that what happens when you aggro a fresh spawn: they all launch their most powerful attacks at you simultaneously.
This can really hurt a squishy, but a brute who can take the pain will have his fury bar raised significantly.
So, it´s quite useful to know the enemies to estimate if you could survive the alpha strike and use the fury to your advantage or if you would be reduced to a smoldering heap on the floor.
EDIT:
Taking alpha strikes is actually quite nice for a dark/dark brute. As Shannon has already explained it doesn´t matter if you are almost dead (as long as you are still standing). Just use Dark Regeneration in the middle of an enemy spawn and your life bar is full once more.
If it has eyes, you can blind it, if it has blood, you can make it bleed, if it has a mouth, you can make it scream.
It doesn't work if they're all using Energy attacks though, is the onlything I have to be careful of. And yes, well explained.
Once I've taken the alpha strike I tend to throw a Electric Fences to keep them close, and angry, then Dark Regen. By that time Fury is full and Fire Sword Circle will kill most of them, Lightning Ball any stuborn ones and Breath Of Fire what ever is left. Sometimes I even use my single target attacks, but only as a last resort
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
I wouldn't go with dark melee for aoe ownage, go with electric melee instead.
Man, I hate opening overtly newbie threads. Sorry about this.
I've been playing a while now. I've tried all the archetypes and can, after a little while, get used to their style and the joy/doom they bring to the game...with one exception.
I can NOT for the life of me get very good at playing a Brute. Anyone got any advice for me? Think in general terms. Is there a certain level when the Brute experience just becomes a glorious thing?
I see LOTS of Brutes on CoV...what am I doing wrong? Am I missing my Brute gland?
-jared
(If it helps I've found that my brain works well with the Corrupter Archetype: Choose your targets with surgical precision, debuff what can potentially mess you up, and keep your friends alive. Oddly enough this does not seem to be working well with my Brute experience.)