Nearly two decades into their career, LA’s experimental electronic rock trio Health have potentially completed their stealth-like climb from underground, art noise clubs into an essential component of the modern metal scene. Where their Disco 4 trilogy of albums gave them a greater presence in the world of heavy music and saw the band collaborate with the likes of Full Of Hell and Perturbator, Rat Wars feels very much like the completion of their evolution into a full-blown, destructive industrial metal powerhouse.
The band themselves have admitted as much in the build-up to Rat Wars, with much of the album’s focus being on the most personal, cathartic and brutal record of their career. Certainly, it all points that way on paper. Lamb Of God’s Willie Adler brings a trademark groove riff to Children Of Sorrow, which sits somewhere between Ministry at their most acidic and Deftones really leaning into their more ethereal influences. The use of a sample from Godlesh’s signature track, Like Rats, dominates the sound and feel of Sicko, and it’s a fantastic nod to the feeling of a broken man butting heads with cold, inhuman machines that Rat Wars is trying to capture. In practice, both of those songs work as well as you’d hope they would.
Of course, Health haven’t completely retreated from the brooding, creeping, atmospheric soundscapes of previous material. Opening track Demigods gently eases us in with a soaring vocal and some Tangerine Dream-style luscious, synth-laden darkness. The closing song, Don’t Try, utilises cold, singular chords with acres of space between them in the same way that Talk Talk did on their classic Spirit Of Eden album.
But as that initial opening fizzles away, both Future Of Hell and Hateful enter with crushing, propulsive industrial metal that sets the tone for much of the album. The beat that closes the latter, and continues through into (Of All Else), feels particularly oppressive, and only heightens in both pace and intensity as the superb Crack Metal comes rushing on in like a modern retreat of Nine Inch Nail’s Wish – albeit one with a far more melodic vocal. In fact, the vocals of Jake Duzsik are one of the few things on Rat Wars that remain melodious throughout the entire record. His breathy, sleek and disconnected style manages to wrap some wonderfully instantaneous and catchy hooks throughout. The KMFDM-aping thump and thud of DSM-V could have been pure meat’n’potato industrial filler in the hands of lesser bands, but with Jake’s ghostly sneer being pushed to the very forefront of the song, it’s absolutely mesmerising.
Obviously, metal doesn’t, and has never had, the monopoly on “heavy” music, and Health have always been an emotionally and tonally weighty band, but on Rat Wars they’ve upped the ante in terms of the pure brutality of their sonic attack. If you’re a pure metalhead and you’ve ever been intrigued, but unsure, about whether or not Health are for you, now is the time to investigate.
