Health: That Makes You Feel Alive
It’s about 10:30 am in Los Angeles and HEALTH bassist John Famiglietti is sitting in his office chair in a SLAYER t-shirt and a silk looking robe with his hair free falling down to his shoulders. The late morning sun occasionally beams through his blinds, “Hey, how’s it going?” he says once he situates himself. His relaxed demeanour translates to his thoughts, casually stating that their upcoming record Rat Wars is their greatest yet. HEALTH are a band that date back almost twenty years, back to to the mid 2000s, a time majorly different from the one that we live in now; a jarring thought. Despite that, the now three piece industrial group have continuously evolved and adapted to the times and their own surroundings, after all they aren’t playing in venues with rope swings anymore.
Rat Wars is a HEALTH only record, meaning that there’s no inclusion of other artists like on their infamous DISCO records, this new album takes topics to not only a much more personal record but in fact their heaviest to date. “It’s Jake [Duzsik, vocals/guitars]‘s sort of advancement in his lyric writing. He’s kind of progressed, the layers have gotten more and more naked and direct and personal and I think they’re just getting better that way. We were listening to a lot of DEPECHE MODE and Jake made a conscious decision to just to be you know, less poetic and to be just really, really direct. Not in a way that’s not poetic, obviously, and I think that really works for us. I think it really works for Jake.” As he’s saying this sincerity for bandmate Jake Duzsik is spilling out of him, it’s the sort of thing that’s only produced by true pride of a friend.
HEALTH obviously aren’t scared of implementing new ideas, they even sampled close to the entirety of GODFLESH’s Like Rats for their track Sicko on the new record. We mention that GODFLESH frontman Justin Broadrick grew up down the road from where this writer is based, and John asks “are you from Birmingham?” in his best Brummie accent. “Legendary rock’n’roll town. Well, making this album I personally was listening to just a lot of early Earache Records. A lot of GODFLESH, NAPALM DEATH, BOLT THROWER, CARCASS. And then we’re listening to it and thought ‘fuck man, lets sample this shit.’ And so I ran into Mr. Broderick, and how fast I was like, ‘hey, man, are you cool? Like, can we sample a song?’ He’s like, ‘o, fuck, yeah, dude.’ It didn’t even phase him. So very, very cool.”
John talks fast, not as if he’s in a rush but more so out of excitement, his enthusiasm is so disarming that it could make the uneasiest of people comfortable. Entering a moment of retrospection John realises that HEALTH is almost 20 years old, he’s almost 20 years older than when the band started and has grown with the band and without it in a lot of ways. “Almost twenty years, which is insane, extremely” he laughs.
The existentialism of two decades flushes over him at once, suddenly he’s very serious as he says, “I’ve been married this whole time, we’ve grown but it’s also this weird purgatory where it’s like, I’m driving across the US for like, the fucking 28th time and I’m like, ‘holy shit, I’ve done this my whole life. What the fuck am I doing?’”
John remains aware of how things have changed for himself and the band despite feeling stuck in limbo sometimes, having the privilege of being able to even drive across a country tens of times to tour isn’t lost on him, that constant is an anchor that keeps life from completely changing for him.
“This is a very fresh time for us right now, we’re having a lot of fun,” he beams, maybe as much fun as when they first started out; where they started out sounds like a tonne of fun and John speaks about the The Old Corral “that’s where we got our start, best venue ever!” He says with a smirk.
The Old Corral, later known as The Smell, was home to a lot of free noise acts where people would just crank their pedals and drown in awful noise. “What’s great about it is unlike you know, New York or art-based scenes or scenes of high highly educated people, or people with a lot more money, the LA scene were just fucking degenerates.” The look on his face says that he loved that about the scene with no expectations.
“It was just funny shit, the best party and you get really drunk and you get on this rope swing and you jump off the wall and fucking take out a dude with two feet. I mean, like so many shows, I would just go full speed and just take the dude out or like I would get fucking slammed into while we were playing,” letting loose a childish giggle. “I mean, there’s always new scenes. You’ll think ‘oh they don’t do it anymore.’ of course they do. It’s evergreen. The only thing it does kind of ruin it is the phone, you know? Kids, they’re all maladjusted because of it and they can retreat to the phone as we all do.”
John gets passionate when talking about people discovering maybe just an ounce of what HEALTH tasted in the mid 2000s. “Hardcore in America has had this massive resurgence. That’s bizarre and a big reason is because kids are on their phone and they’re like, ‘life fucking sucks’. And then they see a TikTok of people moshing they’re like, ‘holy shit that makes you feel alive!’ It’s like yes, it does. And it has for generations and anytime you discover that you really get what you’ve been missing, like the fucking the ability to cut the fuck loose and it’s exploding.”
He oozes enthusiasm when picturing people falling in love with music in the same way that he did back in the day. It’s not like he’s some old man who’s stuck in the past, he’s begging for more people to get sucked in.
John Famigliette may seem unreadable when he’s cast in the monochromatic light of HEALTH’s industrial aesthetic but really there’s a lot of whimsy underneath that cold façade, almost as much as pairing together a silk robe with a SLAYER t-shirt as a Sonic The Hedgehog plushie watches our interview from behind. There’s still a touch of LA degenerate inside of him.
Rat Wars is out now via Loma Vista Recordings.
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