Out December 11, 2025
Via Loma Vista Recordings
Words by: Angela Croudace
HEALTH– a band I’ve been spiritually tethered to for years, completely by coincidence. Allow me to explain our weird gravitational pull; they pop up on my Instagram feed with unhinged memes more often than some of my actual friends, I had the honour of interviewing Jake Duzsik at Knotfest last year, and now they’ve chosen to release their latest album, CONFLICT DLC, on December 11… my birthday.
At this point, it’s either fate or a long-running cosmic bit. They just can’t stay away from me, or I can’t stay away from them. Either way, when I heard a new album was coming, I knew I had to review it. What kind of HEALTH-appointed birthday prophet would I be if I didn’t?
The album’s strengths lie less in individual songs and more in the atmosphere built between them. They balance ethereal vocal lines with abrasive textures, stitching together the dreamy and the destructive with effortless precision. Tracks like Ordinary Loss embody that duality: what begins as soft, floating vocals plunges abruptly into a blast of industrial drums and guitars, before melting back into something delicate again. HEALTH are masters of the light-to-obliteration transition, and this opener sets the emotional voltage for the album.
HEALTH’s club-leaning side surfaces in Burn the Candles, with its dark pulse worthy of a strobe-flooded warehouse, while Vibe Cop goes even heavier, melding pounding percussion with ghostly, mantra-like vocals. Shred Envy, with its 90s-tinged industrial energy, emits a sense of urgency, escalating into metallic guitar work and guttural screams. They push the dance-floor-meets-doom aesthetic even further on You Died, where breezy, almost pop-leaning melodies contrast with weightier lyrical themes.
Amid the chaos, HEALTH carve out moments of stillness. Antidote is a standout, a slow, emotional exhale that feels like drifting through space, carried by soft synths and a deceptively simple beat. Dark Age leans into distortion and grit while maintaining a cool sense of restraint and Wasted Years closes the album on something cinematic and foreboding, swelling like an apocalyptic storm before dissolving into nothing.
HEALTH have never been a band interested in comfort. CONFLICT DLC is another plunge into their neon-lit underworld, where industrial violence, shimmering synth-pop, and vulnerable vocal work collide in a way only they seem capable of orchestrating. The record feels like walking into a dystopian nightclub during an electrical storm; glitched-out, emotionally fraught, yet strangely beautiful. It’s heavy, it’s danceable, it’s emotional, and it feels unmistakably like HEALTH pushing deeper into their own beautifully nightmarish territory, thanks for the birthday present!
