“There’s less culture shock coming here than there is for us going to the East Coast of the United States,” HEALTH vocalist Jake Duzsik dryly comments.
It’s only been seven months since the Los Angeles trio were in Australia, bringing their ‘Rat-Based Warfare’ tour chaos to venues around the country. Prior to that, HEALTH were making the most of a quick Australian trip for Dark Mofo 2023 – a perfect festival vibe for the moody and enigmatic industrial-cum-noise metal trio.
This time around, it’s Knotfest Australia that has brought HEALTH Down Under and even by their standards, they’re shocked they’re back so soon.
“It’s our first [time playing] Knotfest, so it’s new and interesting for us,” instrumentalist John Famiglietti says. “It feels like a big celebration, we’re so happy to be back here.”
Landing the Slipknot tick of approval is an added layer of pride for the band, as drummer B.J. Miller aptly notes. “To get the Slipknot nod, as it were…it’s definitely a cool thing to be here.”
Adds Duzsik, “This isn’t me pandering to the audience either, but we really love it here. We’ve always had good shows here. Australians are friendly, wonderful people.”
HEALTH’s current arc of reinvention and musical exploration, born from Rat Wars in 2023, has seen them attract larger and more diverse audiences across the world. A keen sense for collaboration and boundary-pushing has made them the band they are today – their fiercely loyal fanbase hungry for each new drop, remix, or out-of-the-box approach to noise and metal.
On the live music circuit, the band’s dynamism has seen them tour the globe on stages that have only grown bigger in recent years. Comfortable in a dark club setting as they are at Wembley Arena, performing in support of genre leaders Sleep Token, HEALTH have continued to prove their versatility as a live outfit.
Such experiences on the road in recent years have only bolstered their own interest in developing a live experience that keeps audiences engaged, which feeds back into HEALTH’s own curiosities in the studio as well.
The optimism Duzsik speaks of has bled into the band’s new music, material HEALTH are looking forward to unleashing on fans this year.
“We’re hoping to have a momentous run this year and next,” Famiglietti says. “We’ve got tons of new shows and our material now is a direct response to the shows we’ve played. Bigger festivals and bigger shows, so we’re writing material for these types of events. Hopefully we’ll be back soon too, who knows.”
Duzsik goes into this mentality further. “We’ve been trying not to fall into the common formula of falling out of a routine when we’re off cycle. I think it can be pretty negative, creatively,” he says.
“Routine, whether or not it’s exercising, or eating well… the moment you fall out of that, it gets harder to get back into it. It’s partly why we did collaborative records during the pandemic and then we did an additional [project] to then waterfall into a new record.”
“We were just in the studio considering all of this, we’d been touring most of last year… to be in the studio so soon after, I think it is sooner than most bands would do. I understand the impetus to stop once you’re off the road; touring is exhausting and so when you get home, you want to decompress and live your life. But we are trying to consistently be in a creative mindset.
“It’s extremely helpful because we toured so much last year, to see the songs the crowd reacts to and they have a reciprocal relationship with… it’s a communication of energy that we would want to revisit.”
Credit: Michelle Grace Hunder
The band admit that performing on a lineup as diverse as Knotfest’s is an interesting experience. These sorts of festivals can really show a band who has prior knowledge of them: who is there to see them as a priority, as well as how their music can potentially draw in new fans.
“We have no idea how these [festival] shows are going to go, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised,” Duzsik admits. “We’ve only just started playing heavier music festivals in Europe, and we’ve been dipping our toe into it in the United States. It’s anticipatory every time.
“We’re always like, ‘It’s probably going to be really bad!’ and then it went really well. We’re trying to maintain this level of optimism, but it’s been really good so far.”
More information about Knotfest Australia, and HEALTH’s sideshows, is available here.
