HEALTH: “We’re not pushing any political bullsh*t other than some butt plugs”

“What I have learned from this is that if you script it, it doesn’t work at all,” explains Jake. “But what we’ve kind of built up is that John’s the one that’s fun, and I’m a stick-in-the-mud. Which is true. Pretty much how we do it all is just like a hyped version of whatever ourselves are.”


He pulls out his phone and scrolls through HEALTH’s Instagram until he finds the Reel he’s looking for. It’s dated Christmas 2024 and is a compilation of him being irate and telling people to ‘fuck off’ or ‘shut the fuck up’.

“Like in this, I’m playing a character, but nobody knew,” he says, as the miniature version of himself lets loose with expletives. “My partner was like, ‘Everyone’s going to think you’re an asshole.’ And they do. They just think this is me on film. But I don’t care.”


Surely not everyone is that stupid or gullible?

“Dude,” he begins with a big grin, “my dad didn’t know. Because I am kind of a fucking misanthrope. But the cool thing is we then expanded it to a post where I just go, ‘Hey, if you see me after the show and want to talk to me, please don’t.’ And it’s not because I don’t appreciate the fans, I just feel socially anxious and awkward. The show, to me, is enough. And what we discovered is that works great for them. Our fans like that John is available, that I’m not, and that Beej is somewhere in the middle.”

As if to prove his point, after the band members have made their final decisions about the video, Jake stays in the room to FaceTime his five-year-old son, while John and Beej head out into the venue grounds. They station themselves next to the one merch booth in the amphitheater’s grounds that’s selling their stuff – including those HEALTH butt plugs, an item they initially listed online as a joke before overwhelming demand forced their hand – and wait for people to notice them. It doesn’t take long. Even though Pierce The Veil are onstage, there’s a steady stream of fans lining up to meet the pair to get photos and signatures. Some – mostly those who were already HEALTH fans – expect them to be there. Others – mostly those who were converted by their opening set – are surprised to see them out in the wild. Some even do cartoonish double-takes before enthusiastically asking if they were in the band that just played, and telling them how good they were.

Despite the singer’s absence, it’s very much in keeping with HEALTH’s attitude towards, and respect for, their fans, that they make themselves available. Even when there’s not a gig at which to talk to them in person, there’s the Discord server, an online space where John in particular spends an inordinate amount of time. He even has a phone number fans can text him on, and he’s more than happy to reply. He reveals that, video mockumentaries aside, most of HEALTH’s weird Instagram content actually comes from Discord, and that the vast majority of the memes they post are made by fans. In an age when record labels insist that bands focus on creating (generally cringeworthy) content for engagement, HEALTH’s direct approach feels almost revolutionary.

“We’re kind of a focus group for our fans,” John says. “Even the whole butt plug thing, we were just directly responding to our fans. It’s a positive feedback loop – they call it audience capture. Like, if you’re a YouTuber who talks about politics, you just become weird because your fanbase is pushing you that way. We respond to our fans in a much more positive way. And, thank God, we’re not pushing any fucking political bullshit other than some butt plugs.”

It’s the kind of banter and comfortable teasing that only comes with real interpersonal understanding and deep friendship. Which, having formed in 2005, HEALTH have in abundance. And they can switch between playfulness and seriousness in the blink of an eye. Jake proves that with his very next train of thought.

“What I realised doing press for the last two records – and this is not to be elusive or cryptic – is that I don’t think it’s a great thing to really explicate lyrics. Because if someone has some sort of unique meaning that they project onto it, then you could end up telling them that they’re wrong, or that they should feel differently about it.

“That being said, my lyrics are not very shrouded in metaphor and simile. They’re pretty direct. And what seems to have happened is that I’ve just been fucking super bummed-out this whole time, dealing with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression and existential dread – and now everybody is worried about the same shit because life has just gone down the toilet. So everybody’s just like, ‘Oh, I get it! I really connect with that song now!’”


“We actually meant to put an O before the C and the D,” deadpans Beej.

Together and separately, HEALTH are a truly intriguing collection of people. Jake – obviously – is the dour, miserable one. Beej is the quiet guy who might not say much but still offers a lot. John is the excitable, fast-talking extrovert, chronically online even when he’s not, and the party animal of the band. On paper, it probably shouldn’t work, so disparate are their personalities. But the three of them have been doing this for 20 years now, and they’re only getting better at it. The chemistry is stronger, the music better (and darker), and the inside jokes more inside-y. Case in point: the name of this new album is a reference to the geekiness of the band and their fans. DLC, after all, is short for ‘downloadable content’ – the extra stuff you can get for games in addition to the original software.

“All our fans are gamers,” explains John. “I’d say the amount of our fans with a Steam account is 85 per cent. The amount of our fans with two monitors or three monitors is like 60 to 70 per cent.”

As the years have progressed, the contrast between the darkness of the music and the levity of the memes has widened. But the two things have also grown closer together at the same time. It’s an interesting paradox – an odd, unlikely symbiotic relationship driven and encouraged by their fans.

“They make all these memes and send them to John, and I think that’s actually a very truthful representation of that dichotomy,” says Jake. “When you’re really depressed, or you feel very sad, or you’re processing some heavy emotions, and you then listen to music, you tend to listen to music that’s deep and emotional and sad. It’s a way to inhabit that space, and to commiserate with this musical document that you feel encapsulates the same thing. But when you look at your phone, which is what we’re all fucking doing, you usually look for funny shit. So I think that, inadvertently, those ingredients to the way the band is presented is very representational of how people experience the media they ingest. They listen to music that makes them feel very deep and sad and connected to things, and they’re also just like scrolling brain rot on their phones.”


“One thing I would say, phone or not, is just how un-cinematic life is,” adds John. “If you’re super depressed and terrible things are happening, you’ll still probably go jerk off in the next 30 minutes. And that’s a weird break to your poetic misery, but it’s just what you’re going to do.”

“We’re just jerking off here,” smiles Beej. “No, but the dichotomy is interesting. I think the laughing and crying, to bring those two sides of it up, are both releases. And maybe that’s the common denominator we’re looking for. It’s a cathartic show and it’s a release of something.”

“Cranking is definitely a release of something,” quips John.

No wonder the band call their music CUM METAL…

Were this being filmed, it would be a perfect addition to THE HEALTH EXPERIENCE – it’s thoroughly absurd, but also totally real. Which is very HEALTH.

And while drumming, vocal warm-ups and beer-shits are the only pre-gig preparations the band partake in, there are other routines on tour that are designed to keep them sane. Beej, for example, is an avid coffee drinker. When he’s at home in LA, he roasts small batches of beans under the moniker Black Phoebe Coffee. When he’s on the road, you’ll find him meticulously making what he hopes will be the perfect cup of joe from those very same beans.

“You’ve got to have your rituals on tour, whatever they are,” he says. “Video games, maybe, for John. For Jake, sport’s in there, the occasional gym, reading. And all those things for me, too. I need to run occasionally. Nature. Anytime you can, like, walk on the beach – or the other day we were along the Ohio River, and it was like you were just hiking in the city. It was wonderful.”

Beej's calm (and calming) nature offstage is in stark contrast to what happens when the band step onto it. Leaving behind the levity and banter of the dressing room, once it’s showtime, HEALTH’s attitude, presence and performance matches their all-black attire.

As a freezing wind whips in from the bay that the amphitheater backs onto, the trio pummel the audience with a barrage of dark noise and bright lights that, at brief intervals, almost make it seem like daytime. It’s not their crowd, but it’s clear that people are being won over by what they’re witnessing.

And what they’re seeing feels like the end of the world. Not just because of the near-Arctic conditions that are exacerbating the band’s severe wall of sound, but because it really is the physical embodiment of an album HEALTH have self-described as “sad bangers for the end times”. They’re only onstage for half an hour, but in that time an overpowering bleakness washes over you, inhabits you, destroys you. It feels like all the sadness and the madness that the world inspires is coursing out of the band and into the audience.

But the performance also raises an interesting question. Because despite John’s assertion that HEALTH are “not pushing any fucking political bullshit”, it’s impossible not to read something more than just personal darkness into their music. It’s a reflection of a broken world, and these songs carry the full weight of that burden. It’s just more inherent and implicit than it is direct. It also calls into question the nature of reality, especially online.

“Once you get into overt messaging you enter this zone of career-conflict people on the internet,” clarifies John about his previous statement. “We’ve seen it happen with so many bands we love, where they basically just become ensnared into this endless conflict loop on social media, and it destroys their vibe, their fan interaction and their image. They become like anyone else, just screaming on the internet, possibly to bots. Any time a post of ours has even touched a toe into it, we’ll get these random people show up. But if you don’t feed them, they just disappear.”

Given that the internet is apparently edging towards being 90 per cent bots, every time the trio play live it is a reminder that – despite the memes, despite the mockumentaries, despite the Discord server, despite their deep love of online culture and video game references – they’re real. What’s more, their music is a very real reaction to a world in very real turmoil.

“The dead internet theory is becoming more and more true by the day,” continues John. “Obviously, everyone is on the internet, but they're vastly outnumbered by the computing power of AI. All this shit is just dumping burning forests of energy and it's just fake engagement. And you can see there's non-stop bots and political bots showing up with very obvious or bizarre things and people are arguing with them constantly. It's the worst of the worst.”

And that's the defining duality of HEALTH. Despite being the World's Most Online Band, they understand the potential and the power of the here and now, of bringing people together in the name of human connection – not one created by wires or algorithms. CONFLICT DLC and their stunning live shows are tangible proof of that. So detach yourself from the matrix and (butt)plug into something more.

CONFLICT DLC is released December 12 – get your limited-edition black cassette now.

Get your free ticket to HEALTH's Conflict DLC release party in London on December 11.

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