No Filler Music Podcast - And So On And So Forth: The Many Adjectives of HEALTH (with guest Nathan Forster)

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Industrial synth-pop? Noise gaze? What exactly is electronic body music? All of these words have been used to describe the musical stylings of HEALTH, a band that refuses to stop screaming at you in every song title. Travis is joined by long-time friend of the pod Nathan Forster to dive into a handful of HEALTH tunes to get to the bottom of the band's unique blend of noise rock and synth-pop. Tracklist DIE SLOW GOTH STAR TEARS COURTSHIP II This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. So, Trave, I actually have used BetterHelp in the past, and it was a really, really great experience. I loved my therapist. He gave me a lot of great tools that I still use to this day. You know, without a healthy mind, being truly happy and at peace is hard. Good news is, therapy does work. But what is therapy exactly? It's whatever you wanted to be, really.

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online therapy is really about. It's always a good time to invest in yourself because you are your greatest asset. And we've got a special offer for no-filler listeners. You can get 10% off your first month of professional therapy at betterhelp.com slash no-filler. That's betterh-el-p.com slash no-filler. Thanks again to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. And welcome to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gems that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. This is our first week with a guest host. Last week, as I mentioned, Quentin became a father.

And I have a little surprise here for you guys. Before we get into the show with Nathan Forster, I was able to squeeze in a few minutes here to talk to Q in between diaper changes. and whatever else is going on in the world of new fatherhood. So Q, you're here. Here I am. I was trying to stay as quiet as possible, dude, wondering how you were going to queue it up. How I was going to cue it up. Hey, that's my first initial.

So Q. I did not tell the listeners anything about your child because I wanted you to have that opportunity to, you know, say however much you want to say about the kid. did you mention in your intro for the rewind? Did you mention that he was born? I mentioned that a child was born. I didn't mention anything else because I wanted you to be able to say whatever you wanted to say. Well, his name is Ronan and he was born on August 12th at 3 a.m. on the nose, dude. And it was incredible, dude. Absolutely incredible. My wife Sarah crushed it, dude. She was amazing, man.

I was in awe of both of them the whole time. It's a magical thing, dude. What everyone says about it, it's true. About becoming a parent. Yeah. All right. Well, so this is the first official baby of no filler. Do you think the listeners are disappointed that you didn't choose like a music-related name? Somebody out there is disappointed. You know what?

That's all right. Anyway, Q, glad to have you on the show for, even for just the intro. But let me tell you something. You missed out on some good tunes. So I sat down with our good pal Nathan Forster, who was on an episode back in 2019. I looked it up. We recovered, you know,

we had a stint of episodes where we did basically okay computer through in Rainbows, radiohead, obviously. I cannot believe that was three years ago, dude. This was episode 31. But this is when, you know, Every other episode was a sidetrack, is what we called it. So technically it was probably like 60 something, 62.

Probably 60. But anyway. Yeah. Yeah. So Nathan sat across from me in this room. I had a little rickety old car table setup with like this cheapo microphone mixer type thing and like a headphone splitter. Like it was kind of jerry rigged, but you know, got the job done. And yeah, we chatted about Radiohead because he's.

He's a massive, massive fan. But he's out living in a cabin in California now? Yeah, he's in idle wild California. Cool. Living in a cabin, which is pretty sweet. He says he's actually looking to possibly get up to your neck of the woods, Q. Yes, man. I would love to chat more about that with him.

Well, he's a cool dude, and he cracks me up, dude. I wish I could have been there. Well, it's about to feel like you're there, Q. I mean, that's the magic of podcasts. While you're sitting there rocking Ronan back and forth, back to sleep, you could just have some earbuds in and listen to this episode, you know. And then maybe just a little bit that music might seep out of your headphones and Ronan can start hearing some good tunes. Anyway, we talk about this band called Health and we kind of discuss, we do our best to tie it

back to Doom Gaze, you know? It's not really a proper Doom Gaze band. But health has an interesting contradiction or contrast, I should say, not contradiction. Just like doom gaze, you know, doom metal and shoegaze, health kind of has this interesting contrast of like industrial electronic dance music with like really soft ethereal kind of shoegazy vocals. So when you say industrial dance music, my mind immediately goes to the undoing of David right. So is it that kind of retro dancey punk?

Think like nine inch nails. Okay. Yep. That was the second band I thought of. Well, cool. Yeah, I didn't listen to any of the tunes from this band that you guys were kind of passing back and forth to each other in our chat. But yeah, dude, that sounds awesome.

Well, hey, dude, I'm going to do, let me do something a little bit different here. I want to do an outro song. Outro song. An outro song for this, an outro song for this intro. For the intro. Okay. Yep. Yep.

So this is a song from John Grant called Outerspace. Oh, I know this song. It's a great song, dude. And we've been singing this song to Ronan in the womb for months. It's just a song that we sing to him. Amazing. And, yeah, we sing it to him now, dude, and it calms him down. Like, if he's kind of crying.

Very cool. We'll sing it to him. Yeah, and he'll calm down. Dude, this kid, this kid, lucky guy, this guy. Yeah, man, I know he is loved by many already. He's only five days old, so there you go. So an outro song for our intro. So this is, again, Outer Space by John Grant,

dedicated to my boy, Ronan. Love you, buddy. And yeah, man, I'm out. Y'all might not see me again until September, but if I can find the time, I will hop on and join. Maybe I can join you and Nathan for one of these episodes. Totally.

Well, yeah, they will hear you again next week on our what you heard. So keep that in mind. That's true. A little peek behind the curtain magic there. All right, cute. Well, thanks for stopping by. Here's my chat with Nathan Forster about health and a little outro for the intro here, queued up from Quentin.

This is John Grant's Outer Space. See y'all next week. All right, joining me today for the second time on this podcast is Mr. Nathan Forrester. Did I see your name correctly? Yeah, you got to correct. I should know, I should know your name. Well, you know, Forster's a tough one. It is because, you know, I was thinking there was an extra E in there like Forrester.

Uh-huh. And then I looked at your name and there was no extra E. Yeah. Then you Googled me. I Googled you, yeah. What would come up if we Googled you? A hockey player that has the exact same name. Oh, okay.

Last time you were on the show, it was March of 2019, and we sat in the same room together on a rickety card table that I set up, and you sat across from me, and we talked about Radiohead, their 2007 release in Rainbow. So that was like the last episode of our, batch of Radiohead episodes. Basically, we did OK Computer, and then we ended on In Rainbows, and you joined us for In Rainbows, and we talked about every single track, and it was amazing.

Yeah, it still stands as your best podcast. You know what? I'm not going to look up numbers, but I mean, you're probably right. That's probably the most streamed episode. You know what I mean? Hands down. Yeah, exactly. No doubt in my mind.

But so you're the first guest host to stand in. for the beloved Quentin. So no pressure or anything. No, actually, well, you know, something I thought about is we're kind of breaking some rules here because you're called no filler. But I'm filling in. So it's a fuller podcast. But yeah. So I should change it to fill it for the next like six weeks or whatever.

You're right. You are filling in. So we are breaking rules just right out the gate. But that's okay. Yeah. This podcast just went viral from that joke. Basically. Yeah, that's what we need. Like, the difference between us, like beating out Rogan turns out was just that joke right there.

Now we're going to be getting, we're going to be getting Rogan numbers for sure. All right. So, you know, here we are. I reached out to you and I said, what are we going to talk about? And at first we said, you know what? Let's talk about Bush. And then just like the last time, Quentin and I were like, hey, let's do an episode on Bush. I listened to a few tracks and like I came away with like you know what there's a reason that Bush gets like thrown under the bus.

I don't know. I like certain tracks of theirs, but there's a joke apparently back when they hit that like they just didn't like pass the smell test for like the true grunge heads or whatever. Yeah. And I think he did the thing where he thought like he was he was a huge Kirkobane fan like mega Kirkobane fan. And you can tell with his lyrics, he's like trying to do that Kirkobane thing where you just throw a bunch of words together, like a phrase. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. And it's just like, you know, figure it out.

Like it's poetry. Just figure it out. But for some reason, Nirvana, the lyrics, they somehow made sense. They still tied together in some way. Yeah. And they were like, you know, from the mind of an actual like, you know. Genius. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. genius and like you know troubled soul or whatever right um but anyway we're not doing bush today we're actually talking about another band yeah i've been listening to these guys because they they were actually on my on my radar funny enough because of their contribution on max pain three the video game soundtrack we're talking about a band called health and um i got to be honest i haven't really dove too deep into them until you sort of suggested them and so i like to I've been listening to a lot of their stuff.

And I'm trying to figure out like, where do these guys fit? Because they're pretty unique as far as like their mashup of like industrial noise rock or whatever. But more like dancer, popier, kind of electronic music. You know what I mean? There's a lot of melody in these songs. And in some weird way, we're going to try to tie them to some of the Doom Gay stuff that we've talked about recently. And I think we can get there. Yeah.

I think that's, I mean, when I listened to the last podcast, I hadn't heard this. Spotlights. Yeah, I hadn't heard that band either, and they're awesome. But yeah, the Doom gaze, I was like, oh, that's a great genre name. And I immediately thought of health because it just, you can't really put them in a certain box. But if I was, Doom gaze, that sounds about right. Yeah, because I mean, the origins of DoomGaze actually is like drone metal, industrial, not really nine inch naily kind of stuff, but like the industrial noisy, droney kind of just like, yeah, just noise, right? And then they added in some shoe gaze elements and then you have drone gaze or Doomgays, sometimes called Dream Sludge.

Dream sludge. Drone metal, bliss metal. Yeah, but Doomgays is kind of the term that stuck. But anyway, I think health kind of falls into that realm with like the industrial stuff. But they kind of swing maybe more toward like, like his vocals are super dream poppy, I think. Like he's got that high register, whatever, which, you know, I think fits the bill for that kind of stuff. But then they add a uniqueness to it in the sense of like, especially with their newer stuff. And like the last track that we're going to play is off an album where they started to do.

shift toward more like dancey poppy kind of stuff, which is interesting. Yeah. Which kind of puts them in a different world, I think, than most of the shoegaze artists out there. So anyway, did some research here, Nathan. Oh. In case you're curious.

And that just means that I have a Wikipedia page pulled up right now. That's what that means. Oh, cool, cool. And these guys go back to 2005. So they've been around for a while. and the origin of the name, Health, they just wanted to basically have a band name of an everyday word, and Health was the only word left, apparently, for them to use.

That's it. Nothing sophisticated going on with the way they chose the name, but it works. But, yeah, it sounds like they didn't have much luck with their first record. I don't know if you're even all that. familiar with it, but it's a self-titled record came out in 2007. I guess one good thing came out of it, and I'm pretty sure I've heard this song. There is a remix of the song, Crime Wave, by a band called Crystal Castles. And, you know, when I was listening to this music, I was thinking that, like,

this is around the time that bands like Crystal Castles were kind of, you know, during their thing. And I would put these guys kind of in the same vein as like a Crystal Castle's, as far as like that dancey indie pop that was happening in like the 2000, like the late 2000s and stuff. Crystal castles are great. And it sounds like this remix that they did of Crime Wave actually kind of put health like on the map. So like it's possible that health would not have become the band that they became if it wasn't for Crystal Castles remixing them because it kind of brought a new audience to them,

basically. And then they came out with get color a couple of years later. And I recognize this album or so I may have, we may have covered this, this record on the music blog that we did back in the day that the listeners are tired of hearing about because we talk about it all the time. But we used to have an indie music blog called no. It wasn't called no filler. It was called New Dust. Oh, yeah. I forgot about it. You remember that? Yeah, yeah. It was. short-lived, but, you know, we had a good run. We were basically doing like, you know, everybody had a music blog back then, an indie music blog, it seemed like.

And, you know, we were competing with guerrilla versus bear. You remember that blog? It was like a, I think they were based out of Dundin or something like that. And Brooklyn Vegan is another one. Like these blogs are actually still gone, but you just, you know. It the dust. dust, as it were. But this was

kind of like the, you know, 2009. That's right when we started the blog and these kind of bands and like Chill Wave was starting. So like there's a shift toward like, you know, electronic, dancing kind of indie music. You know what I mean? And I'm pretty sure that,

that health kind of falls into that realm. But they do this really interesting like industrial stuff, noise rocky kind of stuff. So let's play our first track and just get into this thing. All right. So this song is, this is like something that you would write,

you know, in like the, like you would pass a note to like an enemy in school. The name of the song is die slow. It's super catchy, right? Like, it almost sounds like a, I'll try,

okay, here's where we try to figure out who do these guys sound like, because that's the game that we always play. because like where you know where where does this sound like what's the origin of it like there's almost like daft punk kind of stuff sometimes in there you know thrown in like dancey kind of stuff it reminds me of something that would be on the matrix soundtrack you know yeah like the first one yeah and this was you know only but not even like you know not even a decade removed from that late 90s it's like an industrial sound but yeah i can i can hear that like nine inch nails maybe right

which apparently they toured and opened for nine-inch nails before this record came out. Oh, cool. But, you know, I feel like you can't go on tour with Trent and not pick up a few tricks, you know what I mean? Like learn a few things. And apparently there's a story like, you know, if you're the opening band for nine-inch nails and like the audience like doesn't give a shit about you, you know what I mean? You might not get a very warm reception.

and apparently like people would like throw pretzels at them and shit i don't know where the pretzels come from but apparently trint was like hey you guys should you know use some of my LED panels you know because he's got all sorts of visuals and stuff and it shows and they started doing that in their show so there you go he taught him a thing or two about putting on a performance wow how about that but anyway that was before they they made this record but anyway so basically crystal castles remixes them and then they put out this record and then they get back basically into the music blogs out there, which back then was significant because people actually paid attention to music blogs back then.

But yeah, it was real received. I think the record got like 7.5 on Pitchfork. And, you know, that's what matters is Pitchfork, right? Of course. Everybody knows that. Yeah. I don't actually, after I listen to an album, I don't develop an opinion until I go to Pitchfork. Yeah, I feel like this bringing it back to hell.

Yes. They're a little dancier in the beginning, it seems like. It's like they kind of like started off like a little, you know, a little more like, not clubby, but you know, more more bouncy, you know, you want to get in the groove. It could go in any direction, right? I mean, with that kind of song, as far as like, yeah, it's, it feels like a like a dancing song, you know what I mean? And then the voice starts and yeah, then it becomes like an indie, you know,

dream pop song kind of. Or at least his vocal sound like that. Yeah. And I think his vocals are, they really fit the music really well. I think, you know, a lot of times, like, we want to hear this, like, you know, this lead singer that, you know, this front man. It's like, this really, like, giving it to you. But if you were to do that with how heavy this music is, it would be too much. Yeah.

Like, if we tie back to DoomGaze, like, that's what makes DoomGaze interesting is, like, the heaviness contrasted with, like, the slow pace and then, like, the. the vocals, the soft, like, ethereal vocals and stuff. And that's like where these guys are interesting is it's like the industrial heaviness of like an electronic rave song almost and then the soft vocals, you know what I mean? So it's interesting. It's like an interesting contrast. And I'm glad I didn't read these lyrics out loud because it turns out I'm looking at the lyrics for the wrong die slow song.

This is by somebody named Young Thug. And I was like, man, these lyrics are something. but it's a different song. So anyway, I do want to talk about the lyrics at some point. Not necessarily about this song, but it does seem like a lot of their, a lot of their lyrics are really simple and like approachable. Yeah, totally. Which is interesting.

Yeah, we'll put a pin in the lyric conversation and, uh, yeah, elaborate. If that's what you want to do, you know, you're, you're, you're the quarterback here, Travis. I've always been terrible at sports, Nathan, so I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how this is going to go if I'm expected to throw some touchdowns here. Okay. Well, I was going to explain what a quarterback is, but apparently.

Is that, are they the ones that shoot into the hoop or like what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're the all the hoop throwers. I know what that word is. You know why? Because I used to play NBA Jam.

You remember that? Oh, yeah. That was. Could you do alleups and NBA Jam? I think you could. Yeah, you could pretty sure you could do pretty much anything in NBA. jam. You could type in codes and play as Bill Clinton.

Remember that? No, I didn't do that. I stuck by the books. You didn't do cheat codes? You get the big head and load of stuff? I think I did. Everybody did. All right.

Moving right along here. So this is, here we go. Now we're getting interesting because we're going to talk about, we're going to jump ahead a few years. Oh, yeah. And talk about Goth Star. So I didn't realize this. this is a cover of a band called Picture Plan.

Okay. So there's like another layer here. So there's, yeah, there's a lot of layers going on here. So what we could do, let's listen to the picture plan version first. Okay.

And then we'll listen to what health did with it. Never heard this. This is the first time I'm hearing it. Oh, first time you're hearing it too. Yeah. I actually haven't. So this could be terrible.

But, I mean, the song's good. I like the health version of it, so chances are I'm going to like the original. So here you go. This is goth star by Pictureplane. I'm glad, because there's a lot of really good elements there. You know what? Picture plane.

And they kind of put them together. Yeah. Yeah, basically what they did was they, I'm going to try to do a sports reference. They did like a nice little, you know, and then like health kind of just don't on. Yeah, the LUPE, right? Yeah, the quarterback through the alleyoop. Yes That's right

And then the The shortstop dunked it Got the rebound Yeah Yeah dumped it into the home plate

But you know Let's have a more Maybe a more A proper metaphor would be You know It's like a nice You know poorly shaped This is

This is going to sound like a bashing picture But like you know It's like a you know somewhat shaped like piece of clay or whatever they're like here here you go and then like health took it and like made it like this nice sculpture you know what I mean yeah like they they kind of they had like a lot of paint balls in their hand and they threw it against the wall and then health came through and like made a constellation drew like a constellation they made a picture out of those they connected the dots is what you're trying to say do we have any more metaphors before we play

the track that we can use there probably are people you can try to make up here. I think sticking on the sports metaphors is probably that's true. Probably. And definitely the listeners. Okay, so speaking of the unnamed Easter egg, do you want to talk about that now or after the health song? I mean, that one gave it away a little, a little bit more than health version does. But, you know, still, let's have some fun.

Let's do it at the end. Okay. All right, here we go. So let's see what Health did with that piece of clay that they were handed by Pictureplane. So here is Health's cover of Goth Star by Picture Plan. Formed a song right there. Well, what's interesting is like, I guess the Picture Plan version didn't have any words. Like, yeah, Health added some lyrics to it, which is interesting.

And I feel like they made the, but what's weird is, it sounds like they sampled a lot of it too. The health sampled the original quite a bit. Yeah, I guess so. Because, yeah, when we first pushed play out the picture plan version, it was like, oh, it's just the health version? Right. So they sampled a sample.

Yeah, exactly. So when you sent the song to me, you're like, okay, see if you hear anything. Yeah. And, yeah. So if you're out there and you're a keen listener and you're a fan of drum roll, Fleawood Mac, I mean,

it's pretty hard not to hear like her voice is so iconic. Even when it's like mashed up and like, you know, sort of like edited and stuff like that. Like it's hard not to notice Stevie Nix, right? But that is a sample of what is the name of the song, Nathan? Seven Wonders. Seven wonders off of tango in the night.

Tango in the night. So here is a promise I'm going to make the listeners. If we ever do a Fleetwood Mac episode, you will be joining us on that episode because you are a mega Fleetwood Mac fans. I just for him. But yeah, so that was, you know, compared to, I guess, the first track that we play, because now this is like three years later after Get Colors. I guess they were touring and like, you know, this cover was just like a one-off single that they put up. Anyway, so apparently there was a record called Disco 2 that came out in 2010. It looks like it's a bunch of remixes.

Oh, yeah. And then, yeah, so this Godstar came out. And then we transitioned to the Max Pian 3 soundtrack. But what I wanted to, I guess, talk about was like, you know, what I like to do when I listen to like when I hop from like an album to album, you know, because like, you know, years could go by between those two releases, you know, like is try to try to see what direction they're going in. And like compared to that first song that we played, Dice Flow, I guess it's kind of hard to tell because this is a cover, right?

But, you know, definitely poppy and dancey, right? Which seems to be kind of like the direction that they head toward, you know what I mean? Right. Is getting poppier and danceier, but still like retaining that like glitchy industrial sort of like element, you know what I mean? But Max Payne 3 is interesting. interesting. So listeners of this show now that I listen to video game soundtracks all the time. It's kind of like what I do when I work, when I code and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. I like to listen to soundtracks. Video game soundtracks are great.

And I have some Spotify playlists that I just like throw video game songs on to. And I want to say that there has been, yeah, it's actually a different. song than the one that we're going to play, but a track from this soundtrack is one of my favorite video game songs. It's called Shells. But we're going to talk about Tears because Tears is the only track on the soundtrack that features their vocals, which is interesting. So, or at least from what I can tell and from what they were talking about in this little documentary that I watched about, you know the process that they went through to make this video game so like you know if you're like an up-and-coming indie band and you're sort of like getting your getting your feet wet and stuff like that

and then rock star which is the name of the company that made max pain and grant theft auto and all that kind of stuff like approach is like hey you guys want to make a soundtrack for your video game like that's that's got to be freaking awesome right um and talk about like changing the approach that you're going to take to make the music because now it's like, you know, this is like cinematic in some in some areas. You know what I mean? Like this video game needs to be cinematic like an actual movie score. So it probably changes everything.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I feel like something that health does really well is I think they kind of go for a vibe over like chord changes. It's really about the vibe. and there's so much, like with tears that's about to play, I feel like it's like where they started having this very heavy production that really turns into this like a wall of sound, you know, doom gaze kind of thing. Ding, ding, ding, you just said wall of sound.

Like, I feel like I wish we had like a like a bingo board or something like that because we like, we say things like wall of sound and we use the term hypnagogic a lot. which I don't think we'll be able to apply that term here, but let's like, I was just about to use that word. Wow. What a coincidence. But yeah, Wall of Sound, right? That's like the classic phrase used to describe Shuggeys, right?

And yeah, that is what's interesting about like the concept of wall of sound. Because, you know, it's kind of, you know, you think about my bloody Valentine and the album Loveless. Like that's the guitar sound that you think about. But like it can apply to just about. anything and like yeah I think I think this this group does like their own kind of version of the wall of sound you know what I mean and the last track that we're going to play is definitely going to bring that kind of that doom duminess to the for the metal I guess in a way but yeah let's talk about tears so this is the song I never played this video game I don't know if you did back in

the day but I didn't this is this is the first sign that I heard that got me into health Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, way back. And I remember like blaring it in my car while I was driving. And I actually thought I blew the speaker because it like started to like a rattle. Nice. And I was like ready to go to Best Buy and get some new speakers. And I just I just changed the song.

And it was so it was just the production of the song that made it sound like that. I thought you made you just like you're playing it so loud. that you uh that you bust your speakers but you're saying that it sounded like it was yeah which is interesting and yeah i guess you'll hear it when we play the song but um you're talking about the production quality went up um and that's probably maybe you know in some part due to the fact that they had this major gaming studio sort of behind them as well you know i mean i'm sure that they were involved with it in comes the money yeah chiching all right so let's yeah let's jump into this here real quick so if you remember the game apparently this happens toward the very very

end and like they purposely waited to like they wanted to incorporate one like one signature song that featured their vocals and in the game like you the vocals will come in like it gets triggered by different moments in the game so it's kind of interesting if you play the game like two or three different times you might hear this vocal get triggered depending on how you're playing the game which is kind of interesting. So like the song is going to change based on how you play the game. That's not going to happen when we play the song here. So it's just going to happen when it happens. You know what I mean? But try to imagine that you're, you know, you're, you're, you're max pain and you're running through

an airport. Apparently, that's the level where this happens is a shootout at an airport, if that helps kind of set the stage here. All right, here we go. So this song is called tears. So hypnagogic. You know what? If you played that game, it probably is hypnotogic. But actually, what is hypnotogogic? Because I feel like it might actually apply with us. It might. Let's see if we can do it. So like basically it means, you know, like you're using analog instruments and stuff like that from like back in the day.

Like think about Tyco. You listen to Tyco? Yeah. He's a California resident, dude. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's my next door neighbor. Oh, is he? No.

Dude. If he was, that would talk about it inside scoop. That would be sweet. But now, like, when you listen to a Tycho song, especially some of his earlier stuff, like it makes you feel nostalgic toward something that you can't really, you know, because it's not like this is a song that you heard from your youth because it's a new track or whatever. Like it evokes like nostalgia on stuff like that. So, like, you know, a lot of times it's like for, you know, bands that use analog instruments

from the 70s or something like that to try to get that. deep like sound you know what I mean so I so I was totally off it it's not I I was thinking like hypnotic oh hypnotic you know I can see that it does it does have that has that repeating rhythm like there's really no chord changes I mean there might be but you don't notice that it's just like the same thing going and just it's just a head bobber yeah it totally is yeah and maybe that's like you know sort of enhances the gameplay experience because you could just like look because you know they're saying that like the vocals will trigger based on this very certain scene that has to happen in the video game then you have to like do shit to make it happen so like they probably just loop that over and over until you do it maybe but yeah that's what makes video game soundtrack so interesting is like it's going to respond to like what you're doing and shit or at least it can depending on the type of video game it is but anyway um one person I was reading the lyrics and uh sometimes I like to go to genius.com which is like a lyrics site because people will sort of like put like it's crowdsourced or whatever like you can put your

your interpretation of the lyrics and one person says that they think this is a song uh that the the lyrics are a message to max pain from his dead wife and daughter telling him to move on interesting to not mourn their death anymore and for him to let go uh the guilt for their tragic deaths well I have no clue what he's talking about because I've never played any of the Max Payne games but that could be accurate but yeah like I said earlier like the lyrics are always really simple like one syllable like words almost like the way that they write their lyrics it's always very like nothing there's nothing complex about it like the lyrics are love save us once we're far from where we fall love save us once beware what you want that's the first verse but like I was noticing that with a lot of the song I was listening to it's like a lot of them are very very simple lyrics yeah on um death magic um there's some tracks kind of like i figure what they they're called but it's like kind of three-fourths the way through the album some of the lyrics are so direct like you could almost like put them on like a carly ray jepson song like they're very like and they're upbeat they're like you know you got this girl

kind of kind of thing it's not yeah you know it's very like yeah i know what you're talking about Yeah, which is, yeah, interesting. And that's actually the record that we're going to close out on because we're only going to play one more track here. But death magic. Now, this is what you kind of said, that this is where they kind of found themselves a little bit. Yeah, I feel like they hit their stride with this one. I actually saw them live on this tour. saw him at a place in New York called Pusan Rouge, I think.

I don't know if it's still there, but it was, the weird thing about this show was that it was literally the week after the Paris attack at the Eagles of Death Medal. So it was the first show that I think a lot of people there, including myself, were seeing after this, you know, had infiltrated our minds and, you know, scared us to death. Was there a lot of, like, heavy, heavy security and stuff? Yeah, there was like a little extra security, but I went with a friend and, and I remember we, we stood at the very back, you know, because everybody's just paranoid, you know, and to see a band like health who's like super dark, you know, it's, you almost can't listen

to too much health because you're going to get in a weird head. space. I remember the view of the door and I remember the view of the stage. And I can remember the door just as much as I remember the show. Because I was just kept, you know, yeah, which, which it was, it was pretty thinned out. I think it probably would have been a little more packed if that hadn't just happened. But man, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. You know what? You did everybody a favor though, because you're, you're a tall dude. And people probably, like it when you're in the back. Let's just be honest. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And also an easy target just in case someone comes in. I'm like, hey, right here. I'm, you know, just look up and then you'll see me.

You're what, six five? Six, six. Yeah. Dude, you're so close to the number of the beast. Yeah, I'm actually, oddly enough, I'm six six and six quarters. Kind of crazy. rock and roll dude yeah you're going to want to put this you're going to want to edit this segment to be at the very beginning yeah uh because what else do you need to know about nathan forster six six and six quarters that's it that's it yeah i mean that's all people know me for at the grocery store so i can get the tall guy yeah yeah so i can get things for them on the top shelf give me that i really want that jiffy peanut butter on the top shelf i got you i got you got you. Does that happen all the time? For real? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. And I, the same thing,

I say the same thing every time. I say, this is what I was born for. You got the delivery down, like, right? Like that joke comes out smooth every time, right? Because you've done it so many times. I feel like it does, but it's never gotten a laugh. Never? No. Dude, you know what? If you did that to me, I would laugh at it. Thanks, but I knew I could count on you. Yeah. That's what I'm here for. All right. So let's transition to death magic. came out in 2015. So, interestingly enough, here these guys are, you know, making soundtracks for video games and stuff like that, right? Living the big money life, right?

And apparently their fans were kind of pissed at them because even though they put out, here I'm going to read a quote here from John Famiglietti. He sounds like a made man. John Famiglietti. So he's the, I guess, bass player pedals and electronics. I think it's funny to list pedals as like one of his instruments. But anyway. I've never actually.

That talked about important to shoe gaze is the pedals, right? You know, so he's quoted as saying when we did Max Payne, the band was like, hey, this is going to read so many people. But I was like, man, indie music people don't really play video games, which, I mean, I think that's a baseless claim. But anyway. So maybe that's overstating the case. considering Grand Theft Auto 5 has an indie rock station to which Health contributed a song to. But he then says basically when it came out, most of their fans were like, so when are you guys going to do anything? Like they were still waiting for a health release, like the next album.

You know what I mean? And even though this is technically an album of all songs by health, like it's not their music. It's like a soundtrack for a video game. So it doesn't, it's not a true health album in that sense, right? So as he says, their fans, I guess when this article came out, he said, our fans have been aggressively pissed at us for the last three or four years. So I guess they had a lot of pressure going into this record because this was their first like proper release as a band in like five years or so.

But I mean, talk about like, I mean, I'm sure they took a lot of what they learned. Because like you said, they're really good at making like vibes, like a vibe, right? Yeah. And I feel like you have to be really good. good at that to put out a successful like movie or video game soundtrack. And yeah, I think you're right that like death magic just just it's it feels very like cohesive. You know what I mean? Like it feels like like a band that has sort of like figured out, you know, their sound or whatever now.

Figured out what they're what they're going to do, like how they're going to sort of differ themselves from everybody. And yeah, this song really stood out to me on. the record. So the song is called Courtship Two, and they just sprinkle in some straight up heavy metal almost. Yeah. Which really, it's hard not to hear it. It's pretty early on in the song, and they repeat it over and over again, but it kind of catches you off guard in all the right ways and definitely sort of like leans toward the Doom Gaze thing that we were talking about earlier. So here we go. This song, like I said, is called Courtship Two. And if you're wearing a wig, hold on to it.

Oh yeah. It's about to go flying. Yeah. Here we go. Goosepumps. That, I mean, you want to talk about like grabbing your, grabbing your attention, right? Like, right, right, with like the distortion and stuff. Like, that's just, that's a straight up metal moment right there.

And they, I mean, that's what makes, that's what makes health so interesting, dude. And like, I feel like they do it better than the most or whatever. Like, this really interesting mashup of, like, industrial. dancey electronic music with like these heavy metal moments that come out of nowhere and then like the one consistent thing is like the vocals are always like this very soft and they go with more simple lyrics I mean I guess they want you to be able to like sing along at the show you know what I mean because like these it's not it's not hard to get these lyrics memorized you know what I mean I don't know if that's a critique or not but if you can make out what they're saying so yeah the contrast

is crazy. Like that sound is just like you can't really find a heavier sound. Yeah. That. And then yeah, you're right. Then it's hard to find like a more like a, you know, reserved vocal melody. So it's like put them together and somehow it works. Yeah. And that's that's kind of like the gist of the doom gaze like, you know, it's it feels like an oxymoron. You know, I'm like do metal plus shoegaze, right? But I mean, it works really, really well. Like to compliment each that perfectly. Yeah, they figured it out. I mean, health kind of, they found this niche for themselves, because I can't think of a band that sounds like them, you know? I think bands do bits and pieces of what they do, but like, not in this way. Like, it's really, really interesting, you know?

Yeah. I mean, it's, I think the, the production is really, like, important to point out, because, you know, you just, especially if you listen to on headphones, I mean, it's, it really is just, like, it's like everything is all the same level. Like, it's a commercial. impressed like to like you know to 110 um and it's just so everything's just like present right there and that that like you got to get that right you know what i mean to like pull this off effectively to make it like feel the way that it like the gut punch and stuff that you get you know when when that when those moments come this isn't like uh they're not going to do any acoustic versions of these songs i don't think man i'd be sweet they could easily do it that's

funny thing like their the vocals are so soft like they could easily do put out a record of ballads you know yeah but um yeah so you know i was kind of reading around trying to figure out some uh some influences and apparently john famiglietti is the only guy that gives interviews because i could find no interview that um from any of the other guys but he was saying that like uh yeah i guess he's the guy that speaks most eloquently so they're like yeah you go talk to the talk to the guys. I don't want to talk to him. He says here, with regard to

the 9-inch nails, he says, not to say we're going to try to write songs that sound like them, but the connection is with industrial and 9-inch nails. And then he mentions a few bands that I've never heard of. He says, you had really fucking crazy bands like throbbing gristle

and skinny puppy. A skinny puppy I've heard of. Throbbing gristle. I don't want anything to do with that. Wow. But then he says that nine inch nails introduced melody to it. So I guess what he's saying is like the way that nine inch nails took the industrial sound and then added melody to it is like kind of I guess what they do, right? I mean, that's kind of what we talk about like.

That's what they do really well. It's like introduce these dancey sort of elements to these otherwise like super noisy industrial sounding like electronic songs, you know. And then I thought this was interesting. They mentioned Depeche Mode, which I think is, that kind of makes sense. Depeche Mode had that sort of like darker kind of electronic vibes to their songs. You know what I mean? I can totally hear that.

Yeah, they said they're touchstones of combining melodic and electronic elements in rock song contexts. So yeah, totally. I can hear that. All right. Well, that was it, man. We did it. We talked about four songs by Health, gave you a little sneak peek. but they actually put out a new record this year, dude.

Did you know that? No, I did. I did see that, but I haven't listened to it yet. I think there's like a lot of, because they were releasing a bunch of singles. But it's like they have guest vocalists on them, I think. Oh, interesting. So it's not like a, you know, exclusive health. Gotcha.

Kind of thing, I don't think. Well, it's interesting. So a lot of their records are called disco. Almost all of them are. disco two disco three so disco four part one

came out in 2020 disco four part two came out this year and yeah like you said there's a lot of I mean the Lamb of God shows up on a track which is cool

because that's like a metal band nine inch nails yeah so nine inch nails is on a track yeah so this is what they're doing they're just collaborating which you know what good on them right

yeah but that could mean that this sounds a lot different than kind of what you're used to if you're a health fan. Yeah, I think there is a lot of metal in it. I think there's, because I'm not, I'm not a huge fan of like the screaming.

You know, I'm not like a screamo fan. You know what? You're, you're perfect sit-in for Quentin because he also does not like metal. So one of these days, I'm going to get,

I'm going to get an opportunity to talk about heavy metal. But I feel like we got to, You know, we snuck it in with that last song. That had some metal moment. Yeah. I'll let you lecture me anytime. Well, one of these days, dude. And now my response at the very end will be like, yeah, but what about the screaming?

And that's the thing that most people can't get over as a screen. I don't like screaming bands either. Like, I need it in like very small doses. Yeah. But, you know, you got to weed past the screaming to get to like the nuggets of delicious riffs and shit. Totally. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think there's like sometimes screaming is like, it's fine.

I bring it back to Kirk Cobain. He, he, he scream very well. He did scream, yeah. Like, it's a little cheesy if you're like, if you're like, okay, now, I got to scream now. And it's like, when you can tell it's like forced, you know? Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, it's overdone. It's not, you know, it has to be done well, like in the right moment.

You know what I mean? To accentuate the emotion. As Quentin said in the last episode, the spot's, that was about as far as this as he'll go, you know, in the world of metal. But you know what? You got to take your, take your time easing into it. So one of these days, it'll be a full-fledged metalhead. All right. Well, next show is going to be on throbbing gristle, right? I got to look them up because I'm curious. Now, here's something, I'm Florida right now, dude. Throbbing gristle formed in 1977. Oh, okay. Or at least that's when their first record

came out. And they are an industrial music group. And they have a song, an album called 20 jazz funk greats. So I guess they do cover songs, which is kind of funny. Okay. They do not look like what do you'd expect. All right. Well, that's a rabbit hole. So yeah, go check out throbbing Gristle. Skinny puppy is like a experimental like jazz kind of band if I remember. Yeah, I recognize the name. But I don't remember. Yep. All right. Well, Nathan, thank you for sitting in. Yeah, my pleasure.

Standing invitation, anytime you want to join the show. I'm not sure when Quentin will be returning, but likely in a couple months. We put out episodes once a week, dude. So I might be asking you for another favor soon. It's no favor at all. Is it an absolute pleasure?

I hope it is. It's an absolute pleasure. Yeah, and honestly, you know, if you, if you wanted me to do it every day. I would just make, if you just want to make this a daily podcast.

We'd have to shorten it quite a bit, I think. You could do it. We could sneak in some sports, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. We could talk about whatever's outside your window in that idyllic cabin. Oh, I could just go on forever about these rabbits. Like a nature podcast. Yeah, you get the soundboard too.

have like the sounds there, you know, the sound of a ground squirrel or whatever you said. Yeah. It wouldn't sound like it's climbing a tree, that's for sure. No, no. All right. Well, anyway, that's how we end the show. Yeah, that's a perfect thing. So next week, I don't know who's going to be on this show, but we'll find out.

I got some names floating around. But, you know, we might have Nathan on again before the. the end of this year. So stay tuned for that. And if you live in California and you need something off the top shelf at the grocery store, I'm your guy. This is your guy right here. All right. Well, thanks, everyone. My name is Travis. My name is Nathan Forster. His name is Nathan Forster. We'll talk to you guys next week.