Report to the Dance Floor :Health's " Death Magic"

I question some of the reviews where I have seen this project referred to has an industrial, they are edm with certainly a dark and dirty slant to it and a kick , but Industrial ? Well it took many listens to convince me of this. This is their sixth album and it's been five years in the making, so no wonder  they  have become masters at layering some clever vocal melodies over yearning grooves to create some hooks that sink into your brain and pull you along for the ride. They flirt with industrial and might even be influenced by as evident on what follows the tribal pound of  drums that open " Men Today" and their is some noise to it , while the sounds assembled are cool , for an album with such emphasis place on sex and drugs it feels like foreplay with no climax. There's an old 80s dance feel to "Flesh World" the androgynous are very fey in the same manner of Sliversun Pick ups or Savage Garden. There are some glitch ridden sounds thrown into the sonic jumble. I have always wondered if the remixes are going to sound better than the originals , then why not just make the original songs sound like that in  the first place? Well the solve that by making "Flesh World" sound like it has already been re-mixed.

There is an "Army of Me " pulse to "Courtship" , then the album begins backing off  from their industrial into more Pet Shop Boys territory on " Dark Enough". That has a slight dancehall skip to the beat. The melody turns around on the song in a way that reminds me of "Policy of Truth". Things get even poppier with "Life". The opening cadence to "Salvia" might fool some into thinking this is industrial, and it is rather close to some one like Soft Moon. But it's really just an interlude. "New Coke" is a surreal form of ghostly pop that echoes behind the beat. Out of the darkness that has generally been the rule of thumb for this albums comes the sparkle of "L.A. Looks". This could be played on the dance floor of any hispter dive.

There is a little bit of a witch house thing going on in the production, some of it has the old school Zola Jesus lo-fi quality to it and this is brought out on "Hurt Yourself". The album ends with the very fitting " Drugs are Real" whose lyrics makes me think of a few old friend and takes me to a place of morbid reflection on my drug days. I like where the vocals sit in the mix on this one.I'll give it a 9.5 and see how it grows on me , it is good enough for me to want to dig into their previous albums.

The Soft Moon: "Deeper"

I was so impressed by the first glimpse of this band that I had to hunt their label down.The album starts off with very industrial ambiance. The first single "Deeper" is pretty damn dark, it might remind you of "Pretty Hate Machine" era Nine Inch Nail, though these guys have put a glossy glaze of weirdness over that formula. the vocal arrangements tend to be more chanted and droning than anything Reznor does. They have a really good and dense synth sound that has the metallic edge of a guitar to it. The Faint is also a good reference point if you are talking "Danse Macabre" days. They are not too depressed to dance as evident on the more upbeat "Far". There is a more organic element to this one The vocal are breathtakingly produced. The effect that lay on them are perfect , that is not to say his melody is not pretty fucking as well.

Lyrical they sing about life being hard and killing them inside even when they are dancing. There 90's feeling you think you might get from this is smashed against the kinda of roughened up distortion that once haunted witch house. That drugged spectral sluggish feeling that "witch house" had floats out of a throbbing kraut rock star system on "Wasting" to give it the surreal feeling that shoes gaze often takes you away with. "Wrong" hits with more of an industrial feel, but the kids with the cyber dreads are missing out on this one.

The band is capable of creating a more organic sound on as shown on " Try", but to call it post-punk might be a stretch despite some Cure like undertones in the guitar sounds. They retain tension differently than post-punk bands do. It is more like the sensual marriage of shoe-gaze to new wave that someone like Death of Lovers does, but without delving to deep into the bat-cave, though this would not raise eyebrows if a dj worked it into a goth night soundtrack. If you asked the band if they are goth they would more than likely say no, but then Robert Smith says the same thing.

The oppressive industrial mood returns to "Desertion" . The breathy vocals glide over the robot shift of the bass line. A techno synth pattern weaves it's way into the song. It's an apocalyptic hypnosis droning you onto the dance floor. The hollow piano weeps onto cyber punk balladry of "Without" . This is easily something someone like Stabbing Westward or Vast might have dipped into in their hey day. The dramatic vocal build the song's emotional current more than the accompaniment. The electro-grooves they hit can't really be called dark wave. The bass line to "Feel" carries a riveting angular juxtaposition to the guitar shimmering around the vocal accents. The most unexpected and interesting beat on the album is the tribal flourishes on the title track.

The album closes on a weird note, with whispering and samples over a mesmerizing guitar riff that echoes out into a dreamscape of sound, this builds into something that takes a harsh noisy turn after the more industrial elements converge into something kinda heavy sonically not metal . Only the first three and a half minutes are the song the rest is the drawn out feedback of crickets in space. Fans of bands bands ranging from Cold Cave to Skinny Puppy can find something to move them on this album. I'll go and round this up to a 10 as I think some of the songs that departed from the darker beginnings of the album will grow on me and the last thing is more of an outro than a song. Overall it's a pretty incredible listen and one of the first real contenders for album of the year if it sticks with me for the rest of 2015.