It has been a rocky road for industrial band HEALTH since they burst out of their native Los Angeles in 2005, then coming to prominence a few years later via Crystal Castles’ remix of their song ‘Crimewave’. Tracing an evolutionary lineage back to Killing Joke and Godflesh, HEALTH are heirs apparent the industrial crown, and as natural successors they are busy pushing the genre into uncharted territory. In a move that’s typical of their career, HEALTH take a left turn with their latest album, RAT WARS, delivering a discombobulating affair that’s the stuff of dystopian nightmares.
HEALTH are a band who spend a great deal of time picking just the right tone, the sounds employed are deliberately chosen to resonate deep within your soul, and that’s just what the icy, crystalline introduction to ‘DEMIGODS’ does. It’s sharp and surgical, and cuts with deft precision, meaning that when the guitars kick in, it is with some force. There’s a definite “caps rage” vibe going on with the band’s name and song titles, and you may deduce from this that they’re all brute force, and they’re certainly one of the heaviest bands I’ve come across (regardless of genre), but in truth they’re far more nuanced, and fully understand musical dynamics. There’s plenty of light and shade here, with each acting as a foil to enhance and highlight the other, and no more so than on the following ‘FUTURE OF HELL’, a track that constantly repositions the listener, and with such rapidity that it is positively disorientating, epilepsy-inducing and heart attack-instigating, and all at the same time.
Maybe it is the mechanical precision that drives their music, but there’s something very futuristic about HEALTH’s sound; it’s akin to a pillion ride through a neon-lit, rain-soaked, Bladerunner cityscape with each track a detour en route to our destination. However, HEALTH haven’t totally dispensed with the past and sampling Godflesh’s ‘Like Rats’ on their own ‘SICKO’ explores their roots, but mainly the unclean nature of ‘Like Rats’ clashes nicely with the pristine nature of ‘SICKO’ (those tension of opposites again) and the result stretches us in two directions. The band’s greatest strength is their focus on melody, there’s a strong dedication to song structure which ensures a cut such as ‘CHILDREN OF SORROW’ swings like a huge wrecking ball. And “huge” is the optimum word; often the band create a feeling of something so vast it can barely be comprehended, a huge brutalist structure, it towers over the listener and dwarfs them in its monolithic brilliance.
After the bombastic nature of this album, ‘DON’T TRY’ makes for an almost ambient (by contrast) closer and it’s one that stands in sharp relief. It was the last thing I was expecting and has a distinctly Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures type sting in the tail. But this being HEALTH, you should always expect the unexpected.
Rat Wars is released via Loma Vista Recordings on 7th December 2023.
Track List:
DEMIGODS
FUTURE OF HELL
HATEFUL
(OF ALL ELSE)
CRACK METAL
UNLOVED
CHILDREN OF SORROW
SICKO
ASHAMED
(OF BEING BORN)
DSM-V
DON’T TRY
