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HEALTH

HEALTH · 2005–

OVERVIEW

A Los Angeles band formed in 2005, originally part of the noise-rock scene around the Smell, who moved from tribal drumming and guitar noise into a heavy, synthetic and very loud strain of industrial pop.

The Disco series reworks their own material with other artists; the collaborations run from Nine Inch Nails and Lamb of God to Soccer Mommy, which is the clearest statement of how wide the band's idea of the form is.

WHY IT MATTERS

Contemporary industrial music where digital abrasion and physical intensity coexist.

CONTEXT

They scored the video game Max Payne 3 in 2012, which pushed the sound toward something more cinematic and sustained. The later records lean fully into distorted low end and clean melodic vocals over it, a combination that industrial music mostly avoided.

The humour matters and is easy to miss. The band's public voice is deadpan and self-deprecating in a way that sits oddly against how punishing the records are.

START HERE

  1. 01Get Color (2009)The early band at its best. Guitars treated as noise sources, drums played live and hard.
  2. 02Death Magic (2015)The pivot. Pop vocal melodies laid over genuinely brutal low end.
  3. 03Disco4 :: Part II (2022)The collaboration record. The quickest way to hear the range of what they think this music can sit next to.

WHAT TO NOTICE

  1. 01Sweet vocals, violent floorThe voice is almost always clean and high in the mix while everything under it is distorting. The contrast is the whole method.
  2. 02Drums as bodyEven at their most electronic, the drums keep a physical, hit-object quality rather than a programmed one.

CONNECTIONS

  • RESTRAINT AGAINST EXCESSBoy Harsher / Boy Harsher

    Two contemporary answers to the same inheritance. Boy Harsher strips the machine down to three or four parts and a close voice; HEALTH buries a clean pop melody under as much distortion as it will take.

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