CONFLICT DLC

The title of HEALTH’s sixth album is as modern as it gets. “The DLC is a play on video game culture—downloadable content or expansion packs,” bassist and producer John Famiglietti tells Apple Music. “But it’s also a cheeky nod to what’s going on in the world right now, like, ‘Here’s more conflict or stuff you don’t like.’” CONFLICT DLC is also what Famiglietti and his bandmates, vocalist/guitarist Jake Duzsik and drummer B.J. Miller, consider an unofficial sequel to their 2023 album, RAT WARS. “Originally, it was conceived as a double album, but then we realised most double albums shouldn’t be double albums. So, the record is stand-alone, but technically it does go together with RAT WARS.” As such, the LA-based electronic/industrial trio used the same sonic template on both records but went bigger with CONFLICT DLC. “This album was written in response to playing all these huge metal festivals and arena shows, places we hadn’t been before,” Famiglietti says. “We made the music higher tempo, more hooky, but also taking a modern metalcore influence that we hadn’t done before.” Below, he comments on each track. “ORDINARY LOSS” “It’s very odd for us to open an album with a single. We had a song in its place that was definitely more of an intro, but Duzsik felt it wasn't cutting the mustard, so at the 11th hour, we just cut it off, and that’s why the album opens this way. I think this song is doing a lot of things we’ve done before, but they’re new. There’s a lot of things in the song we not exactly haven’t done, but they’re out of our normal wheelhouse. And there’s a quasi-breakdown in here.” “BURN THE CANDLES” “This song was written completely last minute because we also cut another song. We’re trying to get very high-tempo stuff, so we’re referencing a lot of our hard-style influences, just using something extremely high tempo and free in the context of our music.” “VIBE COP” “On RAT WARS, we were very brazen about our industrial-metal influences, and that’s what