Nearly two decades into their career, LA’s experimental electronic rock trio Health have potentially completed their stealth-like climb from underground, art noise clubs into an essential component of the modern metal scene. Where their Disco 4 trilogy of albums gave them a greater presence in the world of heavy music and saw the band collaborate with the likes of Full Of Hell and Perturbator, Rat Wars feels very much like the completion of their evolution into a full-blown, destructive industrial metal powerhouse.
The band themselves have admitted as much in the build-up to Rat Wars, with much of the album’s focus being on the most personal, cathartic and brutal record of their career. Certainly, it all points that way on paper. Lamb Of God’s Willie Adler brings a trademark groove riff to Children Of Sorrow, which sits somewhere between Ministry at their most acidic and Deftones really leaning into their more ethereal influences. The use of a sample from Godlesh’s signature track, Like Rats, dominates the sound and feel of Sicko, and it’s a fantastic nod to the feeling of a broken man butting heads with cold, inhuman machines that Rat Wars is trying to capture. In practice, both of those songs work as well as you’d hope they would.
