HEALTH is everywhere: from the stage, where we regularly see the Californian trio performing on increasingly larger stages, to social media, which they flood with clever communication based on complicity with their audience, dark humour concealing genuine kindness, and geeky references. But above all, HEALTH is never far from our speakers: there's always a remix, a feature, a single, in short, something to reconnect with their typical textures, their overwhelming melancholy and their catchy rhythms. Almost two years to the day after RAT WARS, here is their new album, CONFLICT DLC. Of course, everything is written in capital letters and it's being released on a Thursday. Feliz Jueves, as they say!
The title CONFLICT DLC says it all: by borrowing the concept of downloadable content from the world of video games, HEALTH seems to be warning us that this new album can be seen as an add-on to RAT WARS. Indeed, there is no revolution to be expected. The trio sits firmly on its solid build of skills, still excelling in its blend of melancholy, pop sweetness, big angry riffs and electro/industrial experimentation. Far from the noisy albums of its early days, HEALTH has become a monster that manages to adapt to the world while retaining its rough edges and personality.
‘Into dirt, into dust, It's an ordinary loss, Everyone that you love, They're here and then they're gone, And I'm the same’: the tone is set from the very first words of ORDINARY LOSS, an irresistibly depressing anthem. CONFLICT DLC is an album haunted by death, omnipresent and inevitable. But HEALTH approaches it with disarming simplicity: no grand romantic images, no heroism. Just nothingness, sadness, loneliness, fear. This radical approach skilfully rides a wave of delightfully tongue-in-cheek irony: it is obviously completely sincere, but with a dose of self-awareness and self-mockery that gives the catchy choruses their quirky edge. HEALTH, in its most absolute despair, offers a paradoxically comforting refuge: come, let's join hands and die alone together. Strangely enough, we find here a consolation and almost a glimmer of hope.
The catchy tunes mutate into brutal assaults when the machines take over, Jake Duzsik's sweet apathy gives way to distorted screams, and the guitars borrow their aggression from thrash metal. We know the formula, and it works every time. HEALTH strings together three-minute hits, formatted according to their own rules. From the cyberpunk intensity of TRASH DECADE to the macabre sweetness of YOU DIED (Dark Souls players will appreciate the nod), HEALTH skilfully juggles its wildest impulses and strangest desires with an accessible, seemingly smooth pop coating.
We're having a lot of fun with this CONFLICT DLC, whose most aggressive moments are perhaps even more furious than in the past: there are some heavy-hitting martial passages that make us want to mosh like Australopithecus and celebrate our demise, which began on the day we were born (SHRED ENVY), panic attacks just the way we like them (BURN THE CANDLES), contemplative moments of grace that make us regret that HEALTH doesn't give us more time to breathe (TORTURE II, the sequel to the track on the Max Payne 3 soundtrack, or the gloomy finale of WASTED YEARS). This time around, rather than the nasty, in-your-face hits, we perhaps prefer them when the full weight of existence tries to crush the spectres contained in Duzsik's vocals: DARKAGE, with its distortion-free guitar trying to survive amid the machines, a small organic touch that reminds us how much Nine Inch Nails is part of HEALTH's DNA, and DON'T KILL YOURSELF, stripped of its irony, are particularly moving.
In fact, HEALTH seems more in tune with the times than ever before. At its core, there is this depression and its existential questions, expressed bluntly, without complacent navel-gazing or pompous rhetoric, which are swept away by a dance or an ironic punchline, the nothingness of our lives absorbed by endless scrolling, another escape from loneliness and the apocalypse that is upon us (take for example THOUGHT LEADER). Then, in terms of form, there is a talent for breaking free from genre constraints, mixing everything together and offering something that is both avant-garde and tailored to please, combining particularly compelling atmospheric passages with hard-hitting riffs and pounding beats. In this respect, HEALTH is as fascinating as ever, because its musical and thematic relevance makes its industrial metal offering something that is both fresh and contemporary, but also conscious and respectful of its heritage.
CONFLICT DLC is a complement to its predecessor, the other side of the same coin, a twin album... Or a repeat. While HEALTH continues to refine its formula album after album, we can't escape the feeling that we've already drowned in its troubled waters. If you didn't like HEALTH before, this won't change your mind. What we're left with, however, is an album that is as atypical as ever, one that manages to echo our current anxieties and despair, wrapping the sinister in playful and festive packaging. HEALTH may be stagnating, but above all it maintains a graceful and endearing stylistic and tonal balance that is unique, atypical and intimate, yet capable of seducing the masses – something deviant and crazy, yet consensual. HEALTH is that big brother who managed to be the popular cool kid at school while introducing us to dark and weird things and telling us tenderly that everything is going wrong, that it's only going to get worse, that we're screwed, that we'll never find our place, but it doesn't matter, it's okay, because anyway, in life, there's no place for anyone. So we might as well stand up, it will make it easier to shake our booties.
