Review: "CONFLICT DLC" by HEALTH

Forgive the navel-gazing. I had to write about CONFLICT for two reasons: 1) It's another banger in an unbroken chain of bangers from HEALTH; and 2) it unintentionally lays bare the shortcomings of music journalism. And it's those shortcomings that motivated the creation of NO ENCORES to begin with.

HEALTH lay out a challenge to the traditional angles one might take in reviewing an album. How do you say something clever about an album that is more of the same, but in as complimentary a way as one can put that? CONFLICT DLC is a follow-up to 2023's RAT WARS, and presented as sides C and D of that album's A and B. So it's to be expected that we're exploring the same sonic territory. But HEALTH has never been a band to make radical stylistic shifts from album to album. They're not an "album band" in the way rock bands of days gone by might have been, with vibes shifting album to album the way one might look for in a Metallica discography. HEALTH has always been a band to know exactly who they are, and you can draw a pretty straight line from the sound of HEALTH 15 years ago to HEALTH today. Maybe things have gotten more hooky, more grounded in guitar music, and more danceable over the long term, but gradually enough that nothing here is going to shock a longtime fan. Thumping dance beats, metallic guitars, and distant, wispy vocals distorted to that dissociative peak -- it's HEALTH; you know what you're getting here.

Lyrics are in similarly familiar territory. Loss, fear, loneliness, fading away, dissociation, ego death, the feeling of being trapped in a world gone mad -- is it any less relevant than it was two years ago? I don't think it's a stretch to say it's only become more so.

So it's another HEALTH album? Yeah. Yeah it is. But here's the thing: it's really fucking good. Banger after banger, album after album, HEALTH continues to hone what they are to a razor's edge and deliver.

Released on Loma Vista Recordings on Dec. 10, 2025.
(bandcamp)