Yep, the opening track is called “VICTIM” and starts with some kind of Mayan death gong, so I’m going to spend as much time introducing HEALTH’s new album as they do easing you into it: YO HERE IS THE EXCLUSIVE STREAM OF HEALTH’S NEW ALBUM DEATH MAGIC AND IT WILL CHANGE YOU. PRESS PLAY NOW.
If you need a little more information to help you process things, though, DEATH MAGIC is HEALTH’s third studio album and the first in six years (during which they recorded the largely ambient soundtrack to ultraviolent videogame Max Payne 3). Producer credits include the Haxan Cloak, Mars Volta engineer Lars Stalfors, and longtime Kanye West engineer Andrew Dawson, which is basically all the right ingredients for a perfect sonic storm.
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Opening with a slow, steady beating of drums and a single forboding brass note of leviathan proportions, straight from the depths of Dante’s ninth circle. When words do eventually come, they’re aren’t interested holding your hand as much as they are reminding you that your hand is made of mortal flesh and will eventually decompose along with the rest of you. But there is some respite in Jake Duzsik’s vocals, which sound almost celestial throughout even when they are delivering lines like “Love, love, love / is not enough,” and “We die / So what / We’re here / Let go.”
DEATH MAGIC is unlike any other music the band has recorded previously. It’s also unlike any other music anyone has recorded previously. Modern, intense, and heavy, DEATH MAGIC is a full body experience that not only commands your attention, but completely absorbs it. Trying to listen to this whilst doing something else would be like trying to make a sandwich in the presence of that fire demon from Lord of the Rings. There is nothing else you can do but surrender to something so enormous, so sit down, clear your schedule, and embrace inevitable doom (unless you don’t live in the UK, in which case you won’t be able to listen to it right now. Sorry world.)
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