The new album of HEALTH arrives only a year and a half after “Disco4: Part II” (Loma Vista, 22), and once again shows the usual ways in which the creative facet of the Californian group is realized, handled with apparent ease between industrial sounds, heavy rock, emo, electronics and cutting-edge post-punk. It happens in a series of twelve songs with thick lines and abrasive content, which barely abandon that predominant tone to choose, in exchange, to remain (and influence) on the path in question throughout forty hermetic minutes.
In what is already their sixth studio album, the combo formed by Benjamin Jared Miller, Jake Duzsik and John Famiglietti recreates, with little dissimulation, around that duality derived from the contrast between what is its more than consistent instrumentation, the apparent latent sentiment in his lyrics and Duzsik’s vocal performance. A mixture of states that, during a good part of this work, is not entirely credible and points to some hackneyed clichés. It happens with pieces of manifest darkness turned into epics of the type of “CHILDREN OF SORROW”, “ASHAMED”the singles “DEMIGODS” o “UNLOVED”, “CRACK METAL” or the approach to metal “SICK” y “DSM-V”.
“RAT WARS” (23) is an album dressed with good sound that, precisely, highlights the peculiarities that the group intends to bring to the surface and make available to any listener; and also starring acceptable songs, but at the same time cannot avoid the worn pose and the intermittent aroma of rehashing. A reference that does not quite stick and is quite far from the conviction shown by previous works by the North American band, as was the case with their eponymous debut from 2007 or “Get Color” (Lovepump United, 09).