Album Review: HEALTH - 'CONFLICT DLC'
If you’ve felt paralysed by dread, overwhelm or sheer despair this year then (a) hi, welcome to the club, grab a drink and settle in; and (b) you are absolutely gonna love the new album from Los Angeles noise rock band HEALTH. There is a certain prerequisite that you have to be ready to meet the trio where they’re at to properly connect with CONFLICT DLC, which is both its own thing as the band’s sixth record & also an expansion pack for 2023’s similarly all-caps RAT WARS, spelled out as explicitly as possible on the album cover.
They are also very clear this isn’t just a Part 2, the cast-offs, the b-sides. It doesn’t originate from the same sessions but is very much in the same wheelhouse—albeit with the intensity ramped up several further notches. You put this on and the first song is about being swept away in a tidal wave of grief and ‘Ordinary Loss’; you’re not here for a good time. Wrong fucking band. “All there is is bad news / I know we’ll be gone soon,” Jake Duzsik laments. The inevitability of death is somehow spun into one of the most cathartic songs they’ve ever released… and it’s the opener. That’s the depth of feeling we’re dealing with here. Sometimes it’s just better to call it as you see it, in a world that seems more unstable and terrifying with every passing day. Commiseration, communication and perhaps even a little bit of celebration, as a treat.
Taken as a whole, the album swerves hard into the industrial metal territory HEALTH have seemed increasingly comfortable in since clattering back into the spotlight a decade ago with Death Magic. ‘Burn the Candles’ is music for a strobe-lit dungeon, a near-constant pulsing kick drum anchoring everything even as the serrated guitars threaten to disintegrate and pull the entire song down with them, before things come to a crashing halt and they cap it off with the kind of tempo and vibe shift you can feel in your chest. If it seems like too much, that’s the point. Subtext is welcome but it just doesn’t have as much impact when the world is too much. That’s why HEALTH continue to make their mark.
Duzsik’s likened his outlook to ‘sad-ass slam poetry’ in the past, and his assertion that ‘heaven’s gone, but hell is real for us’ on ‘Trash Decade’ is a deeply-felt pain that resonates, on a song that pushes and pulls between melodic melancholia and sheer annihilation, thrashing out its last in a maelstrom of noise. It’s one thing to write songs like this and it’s quite another to be able to drive them home, so it’s just as well HEALTH have Drew Fulk on mixing duties; he helped put Knocked Loose over the top in 2023 with You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To, and the nightmarish, oppressive atmosphere that’s lurking just out of shot on songs like ‘Antidote’ and the bleakly anthemic ‘You Died’ is something he excels at creating and selling, paired with Ajay Battacharyya’s razor sharp production. RAT WARS wouldn’t hit the same without him, and neither would this.
HEALTH have absolutely got the right people on board, and that’s the thing; these punches don’t land as intended without the full brunt of their neon-streaked hellscape behind them. Thankfully, Duzsik and John Famiglietti’s multi-instrumentalist approach has levelled up over the years, and Ben Miller continues to smash the absolute fuck out of his drums and any auxiliary percussion unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. There’s something to be said for being that powerful; direct, intense, not concerned with being flashy. Miller’s attack becomes just another weapon in this overwhelming arsenal, and the armory is better stocked now than it’s ever been.
As influential as their 2007 self-titled debut was, filling in the gaps and learning to, well, get colo(u)r has served them well, even if those additional shades are various flavours of black. Sure, this is a bleak album for bleak times, but it doesn’t surrender to nihilism. ‘Don’t Kill Yourself’ and ‘Wasted Years’ ensure the album ends on a tear-stained emotional bloodletting, with the latter stretching out to six and a half minutes in length, making every second count as it brings the album to a close with an absolute stunner. Yep, the best HEALTH opener and closer reside on the same record and its name is CONFLICT DLC, argue with the wall.
A couple of these songs will slip through the cracks somewhat on your first listen; that just comes with the territory this record occupies, so gargantuan and forceful that it’s damn near impossible to take in all at once. The moments of reprieve seem like false dawns when you know there’s something worse on the way, and in that way the record holds up a mirror to how it feels to exist in these times but those times where light shines through the gloom should be savoured. A devastatingly sad record that doesn’t try to make existential despair sound flowery or pretty; HEALTH tackle these strange days of 2025 head on, knowing we’re all in this together. Love each other. Don’t kill yourself. Hang on. Live.
Words by Gareth O'Malley
