Volume 4 :: Slaves of Fear
HEALTH has been kicking people's butts in with loud electro-rock-noise for over a decade now, and their albums have telegraphed their arc from fully experimental to operatic. Volume 4 :: Slaves of Fear--technically the band's fourth album, but only if you don't include the best game soundtrack of all time, Max Payne 3--is the culmination of that journey, and it requires our full attention.
Just as a fun experiment, instead of a standard narrative review, I'm just going to post my notes from my first listen, unedited, unformatted. I think you'll still get the idea.
- Psychonaut: odd choice of acoustic guitar start then BAM!!! straight into some trio-EP era NIN drums, their own guitars from the Max Payne OST and the upfront lyrics from Death Magic
- Feel Nothing: Love the beat/hook here, this is what you get when perfectly combining dance-pop and industrial rock, I do wish it was used a bit more though, as it seems like they only save it for the intro and outro, could have really beefed up the chorus
- God Botherer: love the title, the chorus here mid-song is some frenetic metal awesomeness that sadly only appears here, easily could see this ending the album
- Black Static: They are really going full Rammstein here
- Loss Deluxe: basically a Death Magic b-side
- NC-17: this has a really cool Deftones-techno sound (see “Teenager” or “Lucky You”)
- The Message: the most consistent beat so far that really well constructed, the darkest the lyrics as well
- Rat Wars: this is a go at the darkest song for the album, like “Dark Enough” from Death Magic, also loving the Blade Runner 2049-esque sample
- Strange Days (1999): first off, the title can’t be anything but an allusion to the Kathryn Bigelow film starring Ralph Fiennes of the same name, Strange Days, which takes place in a fictional 1999; really great beats
- Wrong Bag: probably the most violent song on the album, and unless I was completely glazed over, I’m pretty sure this is the one instrumental song on the album
- Slaves of Fear: title track, been out a while as a single, love it, great intro, kick-ass beats, just all-around fantastic, still the highlight, obvious why they chose it as a single; love the little suite-esque change towards the end, it’s all great
- Decimation: this is very strange, I like it, but it’s very strange, like, it could fit in on that new Xiu Xiu album; gorgeous guitar overlayed with some pretty random noise elements, then this simple but powerful live drum comes in, like, what the hell
- Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but definitely need to let it stew a bit. Right now it seems like it’s definitely inferior to Get Color or Death Magic, but it’s also really different, like when I saw It Comes At Night the first time. Definitely have to revisit later, will require multiple listens
- Second listen, on better headphones...WAY better, love it now
So, TL;DR, it's great. This is the best of all of HEALTH's worlds, where their noise experiments from HEALTH blend with their pop experiments from Death Magic seamlessly to create a glorious wall of industrial-electro-noise-pop, like if Lady Gaga made Twitch.
P.S. Fuck Pitchfork and their surface-only reading of everything
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