L.A. industrial-rock band HEALTH will release their highly-anticipated new full-length RAT WARS next Thursday 7 December. The most violent yet vulnerable LP of their career, RAT WARS is a brutal collection of songs, that doubles as the group's most comprehensive artistic statement.
Meticulously aggressive production detail collides with painfully personal confessions and a strange savage grace is paired with icy gallows humour… surprisingly it’s still fun as hell.
RAT WARS promises to be the latest step towards HEALTH joining the lineage of groundbreaking heavy acts like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, which re-drew the borders between metal, electronic and pop music. The record also speaks directly to the band’s young, fervent online subculture.
The record has been pre-empted by a run of acclaimed singles including the latest effort DEMIGODS, CHILDREN OF SORROW and SICKO (feat. Godflesh).
Produced by Stint (Oliver Tree, Demi Lovato) and mixed by Lars Stalfors (SALEM, The Neighbourhood), the 12-track LP was written during the most emotionally trying period of the band’s life, building on their chaotic yet re-invigorating pandemic years. RAT WARS captures all the fury and ambition their LP’s have until now aspired to. It’s their boldest statement on the insanity and the insipidness of contemporary life.
Ahead of the release of RAT WARS band members John Famiglietti and Jake Duzsik were kind enough to put together a Maniacs exclusive in the form of a list of little-known facts about RAT WARS.
Little-Known Facts About RAT WARS with HEALTH
ALBUM COVER
"The album cover for RAT WARS is an homage to the layout of our first album. In fact, it’s the identical layout to our first album, which is a little Easter egg for us. It’s basically saying that we have started again."
FAMILIAR TITLE
"There’s an existing song already out from HEALTH called RAT WARS. We were doing a reverse of The Doors’ Waiting for the Sun kind of thing."
COLLABORATIONS
"There are a lot of secret and not-so-secret collaborations on the record. Backing vocals are by Leo [Ashline] from Street Sects and Sara [Taylor] from Youth Code. Marvel composer Tyler Bates plays guitar on DEMIGODS. The producer SWARM plays a lot of heavy guitars and synths all over the album. Willie [Adler] from Lamb of God plays the guitar on CHILDREN OF SORROW, SIERRA is on HATEFUL, and then obviously there’s a sample of Godflesh on SICKO."
CRACK METAL ILLUSIONS
"Crack metal is 98% guitar free. Even though it sounds like it’s guitars, it’s actually synthesizers."
SONIC REBIRTH
"FUTURE OF HELL is a rewritten song that already exists called Dark Thoughts by this producer called Nexy. We heard it and immediately we were like: “what is this next level shit??”. Johnny reached out to the guy and was like: “could you write a song with us like this? This is really crazy”. And he's like: “dude, that's just one thing I made. I'm not even into it anymore, I moved on”. And he said: “I'll just give you the samples, the song, and you can just make your own song”. It is very obscure, no one's heard it. But we immediately were like: “what?! This is incredible!”."
RAT WARS
01. DEMIGODS
02. FUTURE OF HELL
03. HATEFUL
04. (OF ALL ELSE)
05. CRACK METAL
06. UNLOVED
07. CHILDREN OF SORROW
08. SICKO
09. ASHAMED
10. (OF BEING BORN)
11. DSM-V
12. DON’T TRY
Last year HEALTH served us up a 'cold-blooded' collaboration with Lamb Of God. The two acts' signature sounds blend together on the single Cold Blood resulting in a menacing cacophony that'll have even the most discerning metalhead headbanging along in approval.
Listen to HEALTH
