Sad Music For Horny People: CLASH Meets HEALTH

Bassist John Famiglietti reflects on the LA band’s journey, and the importance of their fans and a shared love of memes...

What do bountiful shitposts, merch emblazoned with cum gags, FromSoftware games and industrial music all have in common? It’s a question few people have likely been asked before, but it’s perhaps a fitting opening gambit when discussing the current state of play for HEALTH.

For close to two decades now, the LA three-piece have been forging their own path through the city’s noise scene and beyond. Comprising vocalist Jake Duzsik, bassist John Famiglietti and drummer BJ Miller, the group has evolved from their roots as a live punk band into an almost entirely electronic outfit, never once losing sight of their distinctive brand identity. A lot has changed since HEALTH last hit the road too. Fifth album ‘Rat Wars’, released in December 2023, marked a notable shift into the realm of electro-industrial metal, while the group’s live shows have materialised into an entirely different beast.

“This vibe is different now,” John Famiglietti muses. “Some fans who haven’t seen us in 10 years come back now and are like, ‘What happened? This is different.’”

So what’s changed? Well, a sudden influx of new fans courtesy of the band’s distinct approach to social media – largely spearheaded by Famiglietti, who curates many of the fan-submitted memes himself – certainly hasn’t hurt. While Famiglietti, colloquially known by fans as Johnny HEALTH, would be the first to admit that their brand of brash, sonically harsh music stands at odds with their post-ironic internet presence, both have come to define the band in a uniquely fitting way.

“I think with this new album and all the stuff we’ve done online, we’ve just kind of grown, or hit some sort of critical mass,” he states. “There’s a lot of really new fans, or really young fans, and they only know the first record they’ve heard. They’ve no idea of anything previous to it, and they just got here. That’s the biggest change, I would think. But also the fan culture has sort of taken on a life of its own. Our Discord is going all day and all night, on its own without us, so it’s just its own thing. It’s a lifestyle. It’s the HEALTH experience.”

A quick glance at the band’s socials suggests a band entirely at ease with its identity. The HEALTH Discord, which at the time of writing boasts over 17.5k members, has become a social hub for like minded fans to arrange meet ups and trade esoteric pop culture references, while Instagram remains an outlet for a near constant barrage of shitposts.

“It’s a blast in there,” he enthuses. “We also encourage in-person meetups too. It’s the plague of the modern day: kids are fucking lonely and so isolated with the fucking computer. So much of our fanbase is terminally online people. We’re like, ‘Touch grass, make a friend in person, go to the fucking pub or something… I mean, that’s my lifestyle. I’ve been a fan my whole life. I never grew up. I’m still doing the same shit. It’s like, I’m just a kid who went to shows. It’s a good lifestyle. Maybe not the smartest, but yeah.”

The HEALTH fanbase have been integral in terms of helping to build the band’s profile, providing a steady stream of ironic, self-referential and often self-deprecating memes.

“I think it’s been huge,” he states. “It’s really hard to get people to pay attention… It’s sort of a way to spread the culture, and it’s kind of this feedback loop. And all the shit posts? I don’t find those. Those are all from our fans on the HEALTH Discord. It’s what they like. Everyone sees them and likes it. It’s all the same, same thing. It’s the same vibe. It’s all on brand, it’s all consistent, and it’s all genuine. I only pick the ones I like. You can’t fake this.”

Famiglietti also operates the HEALTH Hotline – a phone number that fans can text and interact with. For the most part, it’s good natured, but as with most things associated with the band, things can occasionally get weird.

“I’ve gotten some incredibly schizophrenic, unhinged rantings,” he concedes. “Like, pages and pages of this guy who’s gonna expose the secret ghost writer for HEALTH and that we are working with numerology and the Falun Gong cult in China… There’s stuff that’s pretty unhinged and I’m always like, ‘I’m not a professional. I think you need to talk to someone. Are you okay?’ I try my best, you know? But that’s rare. Most of it’s really friendly and nice.”

HEALTH’s DIY approach to marketing and self-promotion has clearly struck a chord, but Famiglietti notes that some decision makers have, at times, attempted to steer the group in a different direction. 

“I won’t say who, but we’ve had moments where people are like, ‘You need to stop this social media you’re doing. This is terrible. You need to copy this band. This is where it’s at.’ And it’s like, the most generic thing. Just like, ‘You guys need to be rock gods.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t think that’s… No. Fuck you.’ This is what we do and we’re just being ourselves. And it’s working, and we’re finding people we want. Like, why would I just do something more generic? It’s just insanity. I mean, that tale is as old as time: there’s some guy in a room being like, ‘Do this.’ If that worked, everyone would do it and every band would be huge. You can’t replicate a formula.”

While HEALTH’s online fandom has become more firmly established in recent years, the group’s album release cycle has been solidified over the course of two decades. Since their 2007 self-titled debut, each album has been accompanied by a subsequent DISCO LP, the first three of which centred around remixes provided by other artists. Following 2019’s Vol. 4: Slaves of Fear, the DISCO format was retooled to reflect the band’s renewed focus on collaborations, with the two-part DISCO4 featuring input from a diverse array of artists, including Lamb of God, JPEGMafia, Poppy and Soccer Mommy.

“The cool thing with all the collabs is that whatever someone gives you, that’s what’s happening. We’re not going to tell them to go do it again. They’ve got limited time and you would just kind of roll with it and that’s what’s so nice about them. It’s kind of liberating. They’re just like, ‘Hey, just go with the flow. We’re gonna figure this out. Let’s get the song as good as possible. Let’s get it mixed and make sure everyone’s okay.’ We’re trying some really different artists this time that are way outside our comfort zone in terms of how to make it work. But we’re getting better at this, so there’ll definitely be some surprises and some big names, small names. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just people we like.”

Working with Nine Inch Nails on the track ‘ISN’T EVERYONE’ stands out for Famiglietti as a particular highlight.

“Obviously, they’re very busy, and it was all during COVID and no one was in the same room ever. You’d just have a conference call, work on the song, wait a while, have a conference call, work on the song, conference call, get it mixed. Obviously, as you’d expect, Atticus and Trent are extremely focused. I mean they’re legends. And also, there’s a funny thing where it’s like, you don’t feel comfortable being like, ‘Well, I think it should be like this.’ You’re like, ‘Sure.’”

More recently, a collaboration with CHVRCHES singer Lauren Mayberry, saw the group re-tooling ‘Rat Wars’ track ‘ASHAMED’.

“You know, it’s funny. We toured Australia and CHVRCHES were on the bill. We were at the after party for the whole festival, and one of the guys from CHVRCHES came over and was like, ‘Hey man. ‘Get Color’ – I saw you guys then. That’s why I started a band.’ And I was like, ‘Really?’ Purity Ring told me the same thing. These guys are smart. They made music that people want to listen to, not like our shit. Obviously, we’ve changed since then. But yeah, it just cracked me up.”

So does this mean DISCO5 is on the horizon imminently?

“Yeah, we have to. That’s the new paradigm of the collabs. Everyone loves the collabs. They want more. So there’s gonna be DISCO5. God knows how big it’s gonna be. People love them, so we’re gonna play with that idea… We haven’t really done that yet, because we want to get some more original music out and we’re gonna announce that soon. The hint I’ll give is: ‘Elden Ring – Shadow of the Erdtree’. We’re gonna expansion pack this shit.”

It’s a fitting, if somewhat unsurprising segue. HEALTH’s long association with video games, dates back to 2012 when they provided the score for Max Payne 3, a long-awaited vinyl release of which is in the works, but currently held up by rights issues. The band have since provided additional music for Grand Theft Auto Online’s Arena Wars and have also partnered with developer CD Projekt Red, sharing the song ‘Major Crimes’ for the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack.

Famiglietti is also, by his own admission, an avid fan of FromSoftware, the legendary developer known for the critically lauded, if often punishingly difficult Elden Ring – so much so that he had the company’s logo inked onto his chest, a fact that he failed to mention when he met the series’ director Hidetaka Miyazaki.

“No, I fucking totally forgot,” he laughs. “I fucking froze up. It’s kind of funny, I never really care about being starstruck, but because there’s a language barrier, I just bowed, and went, ‘Oh, Miyazaki-san’. He didn’t know what to say either. So I was wearing an Elden Ring jacket, I pointed at the jacket, we just took a photo, and I was like, ‘Thank you’. I thought, ‘I better get the fuck out of here – this guy’s gonna do this shit all day.’ But FromSofware let me play it before it came out and that was nerve racking – playing it with all these people from the company watching me, and I’m getting smoked. I’m like, ‘Sorry, guys, I’m not amazing at these games. I’m just a big fan.’”

With a tour of Europe now underway, the spotlight is back on the real-life HEALTH Experience, which, as ever, has been heavily documented online. One notable moment on the recent US tour that got fans talking was Famiglietti’s impassioned defence of American food company Hormel and their brand of tinned and pre-packaged foodstuffs.

“I love Hormel,” he laughs. “It’s a brand that would just be in every American supermarket. The whole tour, all the openers had these incredible riders with all this fancy food, and we had put ‘charcuterie plate’ on our rider. Every single venue was giving us the Hormel charcuterie, which is, you know… I love Hormel Foods, but it’s not a great charcuterie plate. It’s like, pretty bottom of the barrel. Every night, Jake would be like, ‘What the fuck is the Hormel shit?’ I’m like, ‘Yo, Hormel is great, man. I love that chilli. I love that beef stew. I love spam. So, anyway it was this running thing – Hormel, Hormel, Hormel – so we had to do a bit about it. And now the fans are like, ‘Oh, I gotta bring a Hormel to the show.’ Don’t. Don’t bring me Hormel. I have tons of Hormel chilli at my house. I’m good.” 

So how does Europe compare when it comes to the catering?

“All of Continental Europe is famous for how great they take care of you. They cook you dinner at the venue, this incredible food and bread section. And then the UK is famous for just being horrible and shitty and the worst venues. You can see how Americans came from England. You see all the corollaries, like, ‘Oh, this is where we descend from’… I mean, we’re pretty simple. We like hummus, vegetables, beer, vodka – really simple. Maybe some tea.”

Then there’s the merch, something that HEALTH has carved a particular niche for since its inception. Working with Creative Director Joe McKinney, Famiglietti has been responsible for creating an instantly recognisable line of T-shirt designs, ensuring that no show is complete without crowds adorned in slogans ranging from ‘CUM METAL’, ‘RAT GIRL SUMMER’ and, perhaps most memorably, ‘SAD MUSIC FOR HORNY PEOPLE’. 

“I’m the slogan man,” he laughs. “I’m like the Don Draper of band T-shirts. We were on tour with Youth Code, and Sara [Taylor] was wearing the Morbid Angel ‘Extreme Music for Extreme People’ T-shirt. I was like, ‘That’s pretty good.’ And then I was thinking of The Cramps’ ‘Bad Music for Bad People’. And I was thinking, what about our fans? I think that’s ‘Sad Music for Horny People.’ I was like ‘That’s it’. I told Joe and he’s like, ‘Put it on the shirt right now. But we love branded bands. We love The Smiths. Every Smiths album has the same look. Iron Maiden, Black Flag, you know?”

In terms of a live setup, the band’s approach to staging has remained largely unchanged, opting for a light-driven show over any sense of additional spectacle.

“We keep it pretty spartan,” he explains. “We don’t want it to look like a set or anything, but we’ve got these light towers that are really intense facing the audience. And then we’ve got these industrial tables, but it’s very light. The stage is pretty minimal.”

With close to two decades of material, the band’s setlist now leans largely into newer material, with a tight configuration that crams a huge number of tracks into an hour-long set.

“Here’s the thing, our songs are short,” he explains. “We just keep adding more songs and if you look at our set list, it’s like this absurd amount of songs and yet we’re still, like, under an hour. We’ll probably just add a song to what we currently have, and we’ll just be at an hour or an hour five.”

Don’t expect to see the band switching things up on the fly, however.

“We’re trying to change it more and we’re working with this incredible light designer,” he explains. “He’s like, ‘Hey, stop changing it. We can make the show a lot better if you stop fucking with it’. We’ve seen from the audience that they don’t really know much past the last record, so in favour of trying to put more of the new songs – because that’s what people want to hear – we kind of fine tuned it. Hopefully we’re going to have some new material too. We don’t wanna play too much new material, because if you don’t know it, that’s annoying, but we’re gonna play at least one new song on this tour too.”

HEALTH play Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Dublin, Liverpool and London from 15-20 October. Check out HEALTH’s website for more information.

Words: Paul Weedon // @paulweeedon