Health is a band that embraces maximalism – from their room-shaking sonics to the absolutely unhinged community they’ve built around that music since forming in LA in 2005. As part of their “Rat-Based Warfare” tour, they’ve turned Boston’s Royale dancefloor into a sea of folks divided roughly into three sorts of dress: your normal band tees and the like; fishnets, chains, monochromatic makeup, and other goth and kink trappings; and finally a cadre of one-piece anime bodysuits from Neon Genesis Evangelion and beyond. Sometimes there are cat ears. It’s all welcomed and encouraged; guitarist “Johnny Health” Famiglietti is the benevolent ringleader of the band’s Patreon and Discord server, the latter of which fans use to coordinate get-togethers at the show as well as post a host of completely absurd memes involving every anime and video game property known to humankind (be extra careful, Sonic the Hedgehog or Bluey enjoyers).
But for every sedimentary layer of internet-induced irony poisoning, there’s a complementary bit of sincerity in kind. The band has partnered with the organization End Overdose to spread awareness on the availability and use of Narcan, and they offer free condoms at their merch table that are vacuum-sealed in pouches that winkingly bear the name of their song ‘FEEL NOTHING’. Most of all, the band’s music is uncompromising, the polarizing fury of their instruments – especially BJ Miller’s drums and everything that Famiglietti plays and engineers – contrasting with the airy vocals of lead singer Jake Duzsik that confront stark existential themes. Their newest LP, RAT WARS, dives even further into that thematic realm with songs entitled ‘CHILDREN OF SORROW’ and of course the two-part entanglement of ‘ASHAMED’/’(OF BEING BORN)’. The album as a whole blends futuristic synths that evoke mental images of neon skylines with scratchy guitars that come straight out of the world of metal, a tendency brought to the forefront on ‘SICKO’, the band’s collaboration with Godflesh.
HEALTH have close ties to video game culture, and it’s not entirely clear if they memed their way in the door to soundtrack jobs, or the other way around. At some point, Johnny did get the FromSoftware logo tattooed across his chest – it’s fitting, as he whips his long hair around while playing like the twisting appendage of a creature from the mind of Hidetaka Miyazaki. The band garnered plenty of new fans after scoring Rockstar’s Max Payne 3, and were one of the acts asked to contribute to the soundtrack of the long-gestating Cyberpunk 2077 – which launched in a beleaguered state at the end of 2020 but has since been mended into something quite amazing, its stellar soundtrack a constant from start to finish. And while the music was a great match for pumping lead and housing painkillers as an aging detective in slow-mo “bullet time”, HEALTH has never been more suited to anything than the dance of death that is hacking (the sword kind), slashing, and hacking (the computer kind) your way through the districts of Night City.
This is all augmented in person with a light show of commensurate intensity with the music. The night begins with ‘A Cruel Angel’s Thesis’ (the NGE opening title song) playing, then smashing to total darkness in the room. But from then on, a myriad of floodlights work tirelessly to match audio with equal visual oomph, ensuring one can only see any of the band members for a couple of seconds at a time. On songs like ‘CRACK METAL,’ they strobe in bright pillars, tracking the rush of Miller’s Downward-Spiral-at-double-speed drumming, then dipping to backlight the band when Famiglietti’s synths blast the wall of sound that punctuates the sound. But where Trent Reznor often opted for raw anger in his 90s industrial masterwork, HEALTH’s music is made all the more affecting by the eerie detachment of Duzsik’s voice, even as he makes declarations with cold finalities, such as: “There’s no way out”. Nine Inch Nails and HEALTH came together in 2021 to release ‘ISN’T EVERYONE’, marrying their mutual ability of crafting methodical buildups, Duzsik with his characteristic calm while Reznor sounds more like a kettle threatening to boil over in each verse. While that song doesn’t appear in the set, the new RAT WARS compositions are interspersed in the set with older favorites like ‘NEW COKE’ and ‘STONEFIST’ from DEATH MAGIC – plus a performance of their recently-released cover of Deftones’ ‘Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)’, yet another storied name HEALTH has intersected in a career that has embraced cross-pollination and collaboration in increasing degrees as time has passed. Thanks to both their well-defined core sound and willingness to throw open the doors and let equally talented people play around with it, HEALTH’s discography is a repository of music that’s as exciting to pump through your headphones at irresponsible volumes as it is to experience amid a dizzying light show surrounded by a nonzero number of people dressed like Hatsune Miku.
Photos and Review by Collin Heroux
