 "Photo: Photo courtesy of HEALTH")
Riding a wave of hype that in a few short years has taken them from playing the Smell — a notorious all-ages venue in Los Angeles with ties to fellow Fun Fun Fun Fest punk bands No Age and Mika Miko — to stadiums, HEALTH will undoubtedly perform their futuristic take on punk with electrifying determination.
Their recently released sophomore album, GET COLOR, shoves abrasive, staccatto-synth noise-rock into something that could easily be enjoyed by, say, Nine Inch Nails concert goers — a band HEALTH opened for a few times last year. Their meteoric rise hasn’t been completely devoid of backlash and a few missteps, though.
“All my equipment died in North Carolina on the Nine Inch Nails tour to about several thousand people,” said John Famiglietti, bassist. “That one was pretty brutal.”
HEALTH’s tech-savvy sound bleeds into the way they manage their band. Not only did they find one of their members thorugh the Internet, but they also opted to direct the video for GET COLOR’S lead single “DIE SLOW” on their own.
The video is a whirlwind of images that looks like a moshpit mixed with a butcher shop that does a good job at capturing the unrelenting stomp of the track. At the end of the video, a message flashes across the screen that swears that you “Don’t have to be a 19-year-old to like this music, you don’t have to listen to music eight hours a day, you don’t have to be narcissistic or shallow.”
“Control is very important and the video was a big step, so I had to direct it. But our next video will be directed by someone else we admire,” Famiglietti said.
HEALTH also recently ran a promotional contest for GET COLOR where lucky record buyers recieved tickets in their albums which could be redeemed for prizes from the band. The prizes included a picture of one of the band member’s mothers, an uplifting phone call from their manager and even a trip to Six Flags with the band, which, unfortunately, ended up in the hands of fan that hates roller coasters. HEALTH definitely has a sense of humor hidden underneath all of those layers of reverb, though.
“[The contest was] inspired equally by Willy Wonka and baseball cards. Just a running joke we had that we actually made happen for this album,” Famiglietti said. “It’s one of the cool things about being in a band now versus then. So its very important to us being a ‘modern band’ in that way. Jim Morrison could not be legend if he was on Twitter.”
WHAT: HEALTH
WHEN: Sunday, 6:05 p.m.
WHERE: Blue Stage
Download this track: “Crimewave (Crystal Castles Remix)”
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