Interview with frontman Jake Duzsik | By Caleb R Newton | Photo by Ako Lehemets
HEALTH’s Feb. 8 Loma Vista Recordings release, VOL. 4 :: SLAVES OF FEAR, emerges more as an immersive sonic experience than an easily-digested collection of songs. The Los Angeles band contort their way through a dark and heavy electrified rock fantasy in which there’s no telling what’s around the bend, as drastically heavy electronic music production seeps through the cracks of somewhat traditional rock instrumentation.
“I think that one of the cornerstones of what we’ve always tried to accomplish as a band is to sound new and ‘unique,’” HEALTH’s vocalist and guitarist Jake Duzsik explains, but he clarifies, “I think it’s preposterous when artists of any type try to act like they operate in a vacuum. What we’re most inspired by is other music, including other bands who we look up to and are just really into. But when we end up processing those inspirations from this eclectic mix of music that we love and it comes out from our band, it ends up usually sounding, maybe, non-genre-based—like, hard to put in a box.”
This liberation from boundaries presents itself thanks in no small part to the band members throwing themselves into what sounds like whatever they can get their hands on to make the most worthwhile music possible. Duzsik and his bandmates, bassist John Famiglietti and drummer Benjamin Miller, don’t just want to use modern technology as a garnish on a straightforward heavy rock palette, they want to pockmark the terrain with entirely new craters.
“One thing we’ve always noticed as lovers of heavy music is that there are a lot of elements of electronic music that are incredibly powerful and are heavy, but they haven’t really been necessarily embraced or explored in the community of traditional heavy music,” Duzsik says. “We really like to move forward and embrace new technologies and new advancements in music-making. A lot of that, in the last decade, is electronic music production that can allow you to get a fucking crazy amount of low-end and power.”
Ultimately, the band’s dedication to the craft and spirit of making music unifies their efforts. As Duzsik quips, “It’s not like we’re shelling out some commercial music because we think it might get licensed in a Target commercial or something.”
Instead, they’re drawing their radical sonic experimentation into familiar frameworks for experiencing music. Duzsik goes so far as to say that the band would consider Vol. 4 :: SLAVES OF FEAR their “rock record,” although he can see how a “rock purist” would disagree.
Long interested in trends ranging from classic punk rock to modern underground electronic music, HEALTH operate less alone and more right alongside their fellow fans. They prove so immersed in a love of music that their complicated tracks almost become a collaborative experience, offering yet another avenue of uniqueness for the curious modern listener.
“We started noticing that we were making more and more fans who were into dark, heavy music and cinematic things like sci-fi and action movies and video games and overall heavy elements of culture like metal and industrial music, and I think that all of that kind of coalesced into our own interests,” Duzsik explains. Those fans came around through means like HEALTH touring with Nine Inch Nails and the band crafting a full soundtrack for Rockstar Games’ “Max Payne 3,” a video game focusing on the eponymous character’s transformation into and work as a vigilante.
“The idea that someone would listen to the songs you wrote and be interested in them and possibly moved or care about them is definitely meaningful to us,” Duzsik says, framing his band’s overall take. “So, we definitely always think about who we’re writing the music for, whether that be our existing fans or people who might hear it for the first time.”
With their existing fans, HEALTH have really struck gold. Their lofty ambitions don’t just see them grasping in the dark. Instead, Duzsik says, “I think that the fans who have been with us don’t know what we’re going to do, but they expect it’s going to be very different every record, and we’ve come to trust that they’re usually very supportive and will go along with us with whatever way we want to explore.”
For the dedicated heavy music listener who’s only just now hearing of the hard-to-categorize HEALTH, Duzsik has praise, offering, “That’s one thing that’s amazing about heavy music: they’re real fans. The music isn’t a lifestyle accessory, it’s like a key to your identity. As a lifelong music fan who’s probably, to my own detriment, dedicated my life to it, that’s very appealing, because that’s how I found myself as a person, through my music tastes. I don’t think there are many avenues in music culture where that is nearly as true outside of heavy music culture. There are fans of heavy music who listen to all kinds of different things, but the one thing that connects all of it is they almost always really fucking care.”
He adds that for many heavy music fans, “it’s not just like, ‘What am I going to play off my phone while I fuck around on Instagram?’ That’s what music is for most people now. It’s like algorithm-driven playlist controls, lifestyle accessories, and that’s not how music occupies our lives, so I think that was definitely something that was appealing to us in making this record—always trying to make music that we feel like people could care about.”
Listening to “all kinds of different things,” as some heavy music fans dedicate themselves to, can certainly prepare the listener for the HEALTH experience, which Duzsik says definitely includes intense live performances no matter how produced their tracks are. They used to perform “fucking crazy” sets as short as nine minutes, he explains, attaching the band yet again to the boundary-jumping heavy music fan.
VOL. 4 :: SLAVES OF FEAR and a music fan outside of the mainstream who “really fucking cares” might be the perfect match, because the album can be complicated—but the payoff for that dedication is rewarding.
Purchase VOL. 4 :: SLAVES OF FEAR here
