HEALTH - Conflict DLC

What to make of the band that HEALTH have become? To keep up with them these past few years has been an often-dizzying endeavour; they’ve collaborated with everybody from Poppy to Nine Inch Nails, and undulated between refining their punishingly loud brand of industrial noise rock and attempting to tear apart its very esence at the seams by pushing it into uncharted territory - melodic one minute, avowedly experimental the next. Add to this that they’ve carved out what they describe as a “coalition of subcultures” in a fanbase, incorporating everybody from terminally online meme-botherers, to gamers, to enlightened true believers in the Los Angeles trio’s self-described brand of “cum metal”, and you wonder whether there’s another band quite like them.

They certainly don’t sound like anybody other than HEALTH on ‘CONFLICT DLC’, an album that continues in the same sonic vein as 2023’s ‘RAT WARS’ but that also represents a direct response to that album’s success. The band found themselves on bigger stages than ever, and have responded by making their most straightforwardly heavy LP so far. The album is littered with signifiers that they intend to stick around at the top table of metal; take the raw riffery of ‘VIBE COP’, for instance, or the sheer noise chaos of ‘SHRED ENVY’. There is still room for the woozy atmosphere of old, particularly on the sweeping cinematic drama of standout track ‘THOUGHT LEADER’, and perhaps even euphoria on the soaring ‘DON’T KILL YOURSELF’, a track that belies Jake Duzsik’s typically anxiety-riven lyricism. ‘CONFLICT DLC’ is not a reinvention - more a purification of the brutal beauty of the HEALTH live show.