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HEALTH has always been a band of contradictions. Born from L.A.’s noise rock scene in the mid-2000s, the three-piece comprising of Jake Duzsik, John Famiglietti and BJ Miller has evolved from a live punk band into an almost entirely electronic outfit, all the while cultivating a sound that remains distinctly their own and virtually impossible to define or pigeonhole.

From the outside looking in, HEALTH’s identity may seem wildly, almost defiantly at odds with their sound and aesthetic. It’s a trait that the group have nurtured proudly, even if it probably seems baffling to newcomers.

“Our band has always been just like this fucking confusion bomb,” explains vocalist and guitarist Jake Duzsik. “We do this to ourselves. It's a blessing and a curse. We don't have a genre. Our messaging is always super fucking confusing, you know? It's like, ‘Hey, I'm into punk rock, I'm into death metal, I'm into whatever thing.’ The messaging in those genres is just a straight linear line. You know exactly what’s happening… We don't do that and it, consequently, has probably made it an extremely uphill battle for us to reach people."

And yet, HEALTH’s reach has been undeniable. They’ve toured globally, scored two video games (Max Payne 3 in 2012 and Grand Theft Auto Online: Arena War in 2018), made numerous appearances on Adult Swim (most notably appearing in a chaotic cooking segment on The Eric Andre Show), and amassed a fiercely dedicated following.

Their new album, DISCO4 :: PART 2, marks the fifth entry in the group’s DISCO series, a companion piece of sorts to HEALTH’s main discography, which features collaborations with artists as diverse as bands such as Nine Inch Nails, Lamb of God and The Body through to French synthwave musician Perturbator and enigmatic metal popstar Poppy. 

For a group that has developed its own lore of sorts, it’s important to note the distinction between DISCO4 and its predecessors. Though its name would imply otherwise, DISCO 4 :: PART 2 is not a conventional DISCO record by HEALTH standards—which is to say it isn’t remotely a ‘disco’ record by anyone else’s.

“You're trying to communicate to people, ‘What is this record?’ It's a band called HEALTH. It's called DISCO4 :: PART 2,” Duzsik states with a wry smile. “I can't think of a shittier way to try to communicate, especially given what the music on this record is. Like, ‘Oh, man, I love Lamb of God, have you heard this new song? It's going to be on this album HEALTH DISCO4 :: PART 2. It's just terrible messaging.” 

For the uninitiated, HEALTH’s DISCO series began life with the release of Health//Disco in 2008. A confounding collection of remixes of tracks from the band’s self-titled debut, which sat firmly within the noise rock/no wave genre, Health//Disco collated a selection of beat-driven remixes that seemed to be at odds with the band’s output at the time.

“I think we've all always been very interested in extreme contrast and playing with juxtaposition,” Duzsik muses. “Our first record is a noise/no wave record, basically. And to look at the album cover, it's like this sort of calming pastel blue that’s basically reverential to '60s jazz records. What we didn't want was to be so on the nose with the messaging of what it is… You'd see the album cover and think, ‘Oh, I want to try listening to this,’ and then be sort of thrown for a loop when you heard it.” 

Building on that unconventional approach to aesthetics, Health//Disco arrived in the late '00s, where the music blogs ruled supreme and a slew of remix artists were hungry to showcase their abilities working with a diverse array of artists.

“That moment in music was an incredibly fertile and exciting time for remix culture,” Duzsik recalls. “The Knife would put out a record and then there'd be forty fucking brilliant remixes from ten or elevent songs. And so that was the musical landscape that we were coming out of. We were just listening to that shit and it was super exciting and galvanising.”

When it came to working with other artists, the idea of contradictions sat at the forefront of each HEALTH collaboration.

“That same approach made the idea of doing a remix record so appealing. You're taking a record that, at that time, had very little melody in it at all, which sets up a very interesting formula for remixes because you don't have the same musical fodder to work with that most remix artists would.”

The DISCO series would continue apace with the release of each of HEALTH’s subsequent albums, Get Color and Death Magic, both of which were accompanied by DISCO2 and DISCO3 respectively. Each delivered a surprising batch of remixes and reworks, but for the companion piece to 2019’s VOL. 4 :: SLAVES OF FEAR, the group found themselves re-thinking their approach. 

“Remixes and remix culture are not in the same place that they were when we started doing these, but we really love the idea of symmetry and consistency in the way that our band's discography exists,” Duzsik explains. “Coming into VOL. 4, we were just asking ourselves, ‘Is there merit, or is it going to be exciting to do another remix album?’… The landscape is different, so that's why we were putting our heads together and thinking, ‘Well how do we keep this tradition going, but make it more exciting and engaging than just doing the same fucking thing again?”

And so the DISCO project was reconceived as a collaborative project, working directly with artists to create material that blend each artist’s styles and genres in new and unexpected ways.

“There are certain elements between the remix albums and the collaborations that are extremely similar because you're pairing the musical style of two different artists together,” Duzsik adds. “The main mandate is whether or not we think it would work. Within the musical palettes, are there elements that would be interchangeable, that wouldn't feel like a train wreck? And it could be as disparate as, ‘This would be really left field, but I think it would work’."

For Duzsik, the process wasn’t about writing music for others to add to later. DISCO4 was conceived to create entirely new tracks from the ground up.

“That's where those kind of happy accidents occur, because you know within the moment of trying something whether or not it feels like the wrong thing, just as you would writing any form of music. But it does kind of predispose you a little bit to wanting to try some leftfield shit. It's like, ‘Okay, well, what if we decided to go really slow here in the middle of a really fast song, just to see if we can accomplish something interesting?’ And if it does, or does not work that dictates the rest of the direction the song goes in.

"With these songs, we're not trying to fucking write singles. We're not asking ourselves, ‘Is this gonna get on satellite radio, or is it gonna be like playlist-able?’ Not only is it not the point, but it seems kind of impossible… I don't want to write a song that's basically complete, and then send it to someone and ask them to sing on that song.”

Selecting collaborators was an organic process, with the band often approaching former collaborators and tour mates as a first port of call. 

“There are plenty of musicians and bands that I admire and I'm a fan of that we didn't think to ask, because it just didn't really seem maybe creatively appropriate. We might end up trying something and it might not fit together. I guess the number one criteria is we’re just trying to think what bands or artists have components to their music that would be interesting in the context of ours.”

Meanwhile, social media played a role in making the band aware that they had fans in unexpected places.

“Lamb of God came about because we became aware that Randy [Blythe] seemed like a fan of the band, because early on in the pandemic he posted some stuff on his Instagram, using one of our songs… Deeper into the pandemic, I think it came from our label: ‘Hey, one of the guys from Lamb of God is looking to branch out and work on some music that's not just the band. Would you guys be interested?’ And we were like, ‘Oh, shit, actually, there's already sort of this connection.’ So he sent us some riffs and then it was easier to have the conversation: maybe Randy wants to sing on this and we just turn it into a Lamb of God x HEALTH song.”

For their collaboration with Poppy, the appeal came from doing something completely different.

“We have at least a discernible stylistic leap or shift in each record, but there’s still a through-line. Whereas with Poppy, each record sounds like a different genre of music. And that's what's so interesting about what she does. And that's why it felt so open in terms of what we might try, because it just seemed like, ‘Oh, fuck, we could make whatever kind of song we want together’. There really isn't any sort of preconception of like, ‘Well, she makes this kind of music and they make this kind of music. And I think that that's why the track that we ended up collaborating on together sounds nothing like either of our bands. It doesn't really sound like anything that we would do. I don't normally play guitar like that. It's kind of shoegazey, heavy '90s guitar and it highlights her vocal in this very sort of angelic and pretty way.”

Many of the tracks were developed remotely, an approach largely necessitated by the pandemic. This freed the band and its collaborators up creatively, with each track starting out with no preconceptions around what the final output would sound like.

“What's really freeing about these things is that due to the constraints of time and distance, you're just trying to accomplish something that feels valid or has merit as a song. And it will only come out if both artists think that you've written a song together that is worthwhile…The only sort of charge is just to try to write a song you like and that makes it very open and creatively gratifying.”

The blending of disparate genres and fanbases can often feel like a daunting prospect, but HEALTH’s emphasis on shirking expectations has led to fans in both camps being surprised by the final output.  

“Early on in the process of talking to Trent [Reznor] about it, he and I agreed on the venn diagram of where concentric circles of HEALTH fans and Nine Inch Nails overlap… The assumption is that we're going to make the most batshit crazy abrasive track possible, so we kind of thought the more interesting thing would be to sort of left turn that and make a song that's kind of verse-chorus, gets really pretty at the end, and has this whole journey—just presenting something that is maybe not so on the nose of what people would expect when they see those two names together.”

While that approach may seem like a gamble, it’s one that’s proven to be popular in both camps.

“The fan bases are very specific,” Duzsik concedes. “People are opinionated. Sometimes they're a little eccentric. We're used to it from our own fan base too, so you don't know if you're going to put it out and have it be like, ‘Why is this fucking guy who sounds like a chick ruining my Lamb of God song?' Or ‘Why is Trent wasting our time with some bands I've never heard of?’ You don't know if that's going to happen, but I think we've all been very pleasantly surprised that the songs were so well received unilaterally by both fan bases.” 

For a record with a considerably heavier sound than previous entries in the DISCO series—albeit one peppered with quieter, introspective moments—the irony of the series’ namesake still holds true.

“I think it was always ironic because our band name with ‘DISCO’ next to it, given if you knew what our record sounded like, or if you’d been to our shows, was just inherently kind of funny.” Duzsik laughs. “But that’s the sort of Rube Goldberg / Mouse Trap / Domino effect that has led us here to where we're like, ‘Well, we could rename this’. And there was a moment where that was a discussion, like, ‘Should this be the end of the DISCO series? Should these collaboration records be called something else?’ And specifically for John [Famiglietti], it was like, ‘It's very, very important that you have this symmetrical continuation'—‘This is the accompaniment to the LP, so it has to be DISCO.’ And we were kind of just like, ‘Fuck it. I guess we just keep the tradition alive.’

"Obviously, our fans know what it means, so for them it's just a bridge together just saying, ‘Oh, it’s DISCO, but it’s collaborations, rather than remixes.’ But for everybody else, it's hopelessly confusing. I don't know, man. It's just a fucking mess. But what are you gonna do?”

DISCO4 :: PART 2 arrives 8 April via Loma Vista Recordings.

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More about: Health