Album review: HEALTH – DISCO4 :: PART II

HEALTH’s address book must be a treasure trove of left-of-centre musical contacts. Following multiple remix albums they released DISCO4:: PART I in 2020, featuring collaborations with the likes of Perturbator, Ghostemane and Youth Code. Follow-up PART II is more of the same, but with a more rarefied guestlist. You don’t get any bigger than Nine Inch Nails in the industrial godhead stakes, while Poppy represents the brightest of a new breed of musical insurrectionists.

The album opens with those two big hitters. DEAD FLOWERS incorporates Poppy into a floaty goth-pop wonderland while ISN’T EVERYONE situates NIN in a darkly slick pulse of industrial rock, that is absolutely the first place you’d look if you wanted to call Trent in for his tea. For a roster with such wild eclecticism, it doesn't tear up the rules quite as much as you think it might – when Lamb Of God crop up on COLD BLOOD, it sounds like Lamb Of God with an icy HEALTH interlude – but it remains a bold statement nevertheless.

There are some excellent moments lurking on here, though. MURDER DEATH KILL brings in Ada Rook and PlayThatBoiZay for a nicely chaotic vocal three-way with HEALTH’s own Jake Duzsik. IDENTITY with Maenad Veyl offers a danceable beat with a promise of violence and PAGAN-ICONZ with Backxwash and Ho99o9 is a low sinister trawl through a cityscape at 4am.

They end on a sort of listless high with the guest-free, ennui-soaked THESE DAYS 2021 summing up the energy of the past couple of years. HEALTH are quickly becoming one of the most intriguing and respected acts around, and while DISCO4:: PART II isn't perfect, it's definitely worth your time.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: A Place To Bury Strangers, Nine Inch Nails, Perturbator

DISCO4:: PART II is out now via Loma Vista

Read this: HEALTH: “We always thought we were making music for a post-Skynet landscape”