Health — Rat Wars (Red Smoke)

Limited Edition LP on Red Smoke Vinyl The L.A. industrial-rockers album, Rat Wars, is their most violent yet vulnerable LP. It’s somehow fitting that such a brutal collection of songs is at the same time their most comprehensive artistic statement. Meticulously aggressive production detail collides with painfully personal confessions, and a strange savage grace is paired with icy gallows humor. Surprisingly it’s still fun as hell. Rat Wars joins the lineage of ground-breaking heavy acts like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, which re-drew the borders between metal, electronic and pop music. It also speaks directly to the band’s young, fervent, online subculture. It’s The Downward Spiral for people with at least two monitors and a vitamin D deficiency. Written during an emotionally trying period, the album builds on the band’s chaotic yet re-invigorating pandemic years. In that time, Health cut dozens of tracks with heroes and inheritors like Nine Inch Nails, Lamb Of God, 100 Gecs, Poppy, and Pertubator on DISCO4. Rat Wars captures all the fury and ambition their LPs have until now aspired to — their boldest statement on the insanity and the insipidness of contemporary life. Released: 6/20/25