It’s an especially noteworthy characteristic of HEALTH’s new album that it’s coming so soon after their last. That one was DISCO4 :: PART II from last year, an album which already had the aura of ‘side-project’ around it right from the start. Not only was it overloaded with guest performers, but in the notably uneven way that comes from a huge number of new factors thrown at the wall, with the clear foreknowledge that not all of them will stick. Though that’s also very standard of HEALTH, a band who’ve taken such pride in recent years of become the de facto bridge-builders between deep, dark industrial murk, and the terminally online homeworld of Black Dresses and other SoundCloud-dwelling noiseniks. It’s what’s so interesting about RAT WARS arriving right now—when its predecessor arguably represented the apogee of HEALTH’s vision into that realm, is there more to really venture into only 20 months later?
Well, maybe that’s the wrong question to ask. Not just because HEALTH’s penchant for unpredictability ensures that, yes, they do always know what they’re doing, but because RAT WARS is a wholly different species of animal than what came directly prior. That was an inarguable experiment; this is back to basics (so to speak), albeit with a lot of the cues previously picked up back in place. It’s all a lot more focused when brought back to mainly HEALTH themselves, allowing their explorations between the fringes of industrial, metal and the blackest reaches of synthwave to hit with more consistent power. And bloody hell, is RAT WARS powerful.
It’s probably worth addressing the biggest criticism first then, that being how there isn’t a ton a variety to speak of. In essence, much of this album is carved from the same calamitous lockstep percussion and icy industrial atmosphere, rewired as seen fit throughout. Now, to be fair, that’s a very reductive generalisation in its own right, but it’s also not without merit, particularly when it’s more pronounced on songs like UNLOVED and ASHAMED. It’s also entirely the point as well, where the devastating, pounding machinery that HEALTH find themselves built from is here to emphasise how physically coated in blackened impulse it is. In the same way Nine Inch Nails mirrored a nihilism and misanthropy in their sound that was practically what defined them as a band, HEALTH find themselves in a similar position, updated for a whole new generation. This is the sound of crushing self-defeat and loathing onset through bilious online vitriol, and against the backdrop of irony-pilled detachment and an eschewing of human warmth that’s been wholly normalised.
That is to say, RAT WARS sees HEALTH carve out an oeuvre for themselves that’s incalculably strong for exactly what they’re trying to achieve. Heaviness is its most defining trait, in a way that often surpasses most ‘normal’ metal in terms of incessant, destructive intent. Even when Lamb Of God’s Willie Adler lends his axe-work to CHILDREN OF SORROW, it’s basically outclassed by the very next track SICKO, built around a liberal sample of Godflesh’s Like Rats and the mechanical heave roaring under its own almighty weight. Elsewhere, there’s the splintering, blown out synths of FUTURE OF HELL and the higher tempo and metal-on-metal clatter of CRACK METAL, both of which test the edges of this particular strain of brutality. It’s iced over and inflicted with its own venom, which HEALTH are able to germinate their ideas from so effectively.
But there’s also a balance at play too, one where there’s genuine atmosphere and depth amid the industrial nightmare-scape. It’s not in an unduly discordant way, though; not at all, in fact. If anything, the flecks and lines of melody in RAT WARS’ hostile exterior are what ties this all together, not least because Jake Duzsik’s breathier, quivering register acts more as another instrumental beat unto itself. There’s a certain level of ambience that HEALTH play with here, culminating in DON’T TRY as a straight-ahead ethereal closer (the only track without the onslaught of percussion to contend with) that mightn’t be the final blowout as shown everywhere else, but certainly rounds the album off on a distinct note. It’s overall a great illustration of another source of HEALTH’s strength; you’ll catch glimpses in the notably poppy new wave hook of UNLOVED, or the hints of EDM and darkwave on DSM-V, only to have them really crystallise in the larger, grander context of an album made this unashamedly maximalist.
And thus, to go back to the previous assertions of HEALTH’s vision, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that RAT WARS is the strongest permutation of that to date. There’s everything that HEALTH have become known for—the drive; the aesthetic; the uncompromising thunder that’ll leave you as a red stain on its hydraulic presses—plus the streamlining to get the absolute most from it. It’s also not the overlong, overbearing gautlet of dejection albums like this can often be; it moves surprisingly quickly, despite how much mechanical, regimented stomp is at play. But if anything, that’s the sign of a band more than capable of making every aspect of themselves compelling, just as Nine Inch Nails did so far before them in their heyday. So are HEALTH Gen Z’s Nine Inch Nails? Maybe; there’s not a lot of competition for them to go against. But to boil them down to simply that would do a disservice to just how much HEALTH have going for them, on this album alone. Ice-cold decimation rarely sounds this good.
For fans of: Nine Inch Nails, Godflesh, clipping.
‘RAT WARS’ by HEALTH is released on 7th December on Loma Vista Recordings.
Words by Luke Nuttall
