HEALTH has spent the last year and a half touring RAT WARS on the metal festival circuit alongside in-your-face mega-bands like Slipknot and Sleep Token. That experience prompted them to up the tempo going forward. “When you’re sandwiched between these insane bands you start to think, ok, we need a little more firepower,” says Famiglietti. CONFLICT DLC, brings exactly that. 

A stack of 12 full-octane industrial metal bangers, CONFLICT DLC refracts the band’s formative influences like Ministry, Rammstein, and Black Sabbath through their own maximalist lens. “Still doing our thing, but adding new weapon types,” Famiglietti jokes. It’s produced by RAT WARS’ STINT (Ajay Bhattacharyya), taking the cinematic heaviness established on that album and pushing it in a more concentrated direction. The band also tapped Knocked Loose producer WZRD BLD (Drew Fulk) to mix the album alongside Lars Stalfors, and the two somehow perfectly balance it’s high contrast textures. Stalfors steers the pulse of synth slow-jams and extra-terrestrial instrumentals (“ANTIDOTE,” “YOU DIED,” “TORTURE II”), while Fulk lends HEALTH’s aggressive side an even more monstrous dimension. 

While the new LP acts as a companion piece that inhabits the same sprawling aesthetic universe as RAT WARS, it is more direct and harder-hitting. Heavy riffs and blistered snares rain down like boulders on singles “ORDINARY LOSS” and “VIBE COP,” while the dance-friendly beat of “SHRED ENVY” and yearning thrust of “THOUGHT LEADER” demonstrate a newfound embrace of bouncing between modes in the same track. Pop jams transition into heavy breakdowns transition, into suspended ambience – a sonic mirror for the chaos of modern life.  

1. Ordinary Loss
2. Burn The Candles
3. Vibe Cop
4. Trash Decade
5. Torture II
6. Antidote
7. Darkage
8. Shred Envy
9. You Died
10. Thought Leader
11. Don't Kill Yourself
12. Wasted Years