HEALTH on their comeback record, social media trolling and staying afloat in 2016

Loud, abrasive and hungry are probably the most fitting words to describe the obnoxious punch in the face that is, HEALTH's, Death Magic.

Having dropped a couple of special releases over the past few years, including their 2010 remix record, HEALTH::Disco2; and the audible theming of video game, Max Payne 3, released in 2012; HEALTH's, Death Magic, is the first original body of work to surface from the past six years. Losing all fear of breaching sonic territories, it's almost priority that you listen to it on volume notch 11, for its waves and currents are far too electrifying to settle for anything less.

Sure to rip sound systems apart on their Australian tour, HEALTH will be hopping aboard the Laneway Festival ship for the 2016 edition, as well as squeezing in some lively sideshows.

Extremely excited to catch these guys live, we were lucky enough to pester HEALTH's, John Famiglietti, to talk, Death Magic, social media and the 2016 pipeline.

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Purple Sneakers: HEALTH have been around for about a decade now. Exploring a really large sound, how did you guys discover you were all on the same wave length when you initially started the band?

John Famiglietti: We didn’t actually! When we started I had just met the guys, but I didn’t really think that it could work. None of us really thought that this was going to work. We started writing together, you know songs for the first album, and seeing the reaction people had to it made us keep going with it. So it was a very gradual process.

So feeding off the reaction you received made it seem more promising?

Yeah, I mean we were doing it, but we were all doubtful of it. We started doing shows pretty much immediately, so the reaction we had was really overwhelming. They were tiny shows with a handful of people, but the way those people were talking about it kinda made us keep going. So yeah it wasn’t like we met and immediately clicked or anything, we were all doubtful that it would work.

You’ve been described as anywhere between a “noise” band to “art-rock”. How does HEALTH see themselves? I can’t imagine you guys believing in defining sound?

Ahh I dunno man, that would definitely be for someone else to say so I’ll just avoid it [laughs].

You’ve just released Death Magic. How much of the six year gap between records was spent on the new material?

Oh I never would recommend to take this long a break, it’s never a good thing. It wasn’t by design, it was by choice. I dunno though, it’s hard to quantify. We were just really dedicated to make an album turn out the way it did.

Do you think that decision was influenced by context?

Absolutely, yeah. It’s very much a turn of the most recent decade where we were really witnessing a need for existence. Production is garish in a certain way and there’s this exciting modern element.

Is it a concept album?

No, not in a traditional way. I mean I’m sure a lot of Jake (Duzsik)’s lyrical songwriting says a lot, but it’s not like a story of a man dealing with life and death or whatever, you know?

I feel like your music is super dynamic, and can be utilised very artistically (as it has done in the past). Where would you like to see this album explored aside from in musical form?

Oh absolutely! I feel like a lot of parts are very cinematic because they could work for, I dunno, a movie or some sort of dramatic narrative thing or mood thing.

So perhaps to score a film or the like?

Oh absolutely, yeah, we scored a video game in 2012 (Rockstar’s Max Payne 3), which was something we were very much into.

You’ve collaborated with Crystal Castles and released remix records for HEALTH albums. Are there any new collaborative projects in the works?

Yeah! There are actually. I can’t spill the beans, but yeah that’s kind of a new thing for us that we’re doing a lot more now which we’re pretty excited about.

I need to ask about your Facebook statuses. I can see the dark humour, though I’ve noticed the offence of quite a few. Who and what drives these social media posts?

Um, I dunno just stuff we’re thinking. I mean it is a persona, we’re not actually like fucking our dog or anything, but it’s just stuff we’re thinking about.

Also with social media, it’s really how you relate to your fans, like yeah I can have a personal conversation with them. But there’s all these bland updates or you see all these artists who are just talking about themselves all the time and that’s just not cool, so we just got really into like lame, funny shit. I don’t know [laughs]! If you’ve got this amazing joke delivery device in your hand, it’s great.

Yeah, may as well utilise it!

Most Internet shit you look at is humour, you know most of that shit is life gifs or memes, hilarious crap, so yeah why not word a joke and Twitter it?

You’ll be in Australia for Laneway next year. What can you tell fans to expect of your 2016 live show?

Oh hmm, it’s good. I dunno, we’re just really excited to come. We’ve been dying to do this tour for a long time, so we always dreamed of getting on the Laneway tour.

Who are you looking forward to be hanging out with on the Laneway tour?

We’re really good friends with Purity Ring, so that’s going to be really fun to be hanging with them. We also know Metz, which should be really fun too. Then there’s a lot of people I don’t know that well that we can just hang out with! There’s a lot of cool artists on the bill.

What else is coming up for HEALTH come 2016?

Um, fine question. Definitely a lot more touring. We’d like to put out a lot more music, we don’t want to have these massive gaps between records. Maybe more shit like remixes, more singles. We’d like to put out a lot more music.

In terms of remixes, would you guys do a whole remix album again?

We want to, we just have to do enough good ones. We’ll do it if it’s good, but we won’t do it if it sucks.