Home Interviews IN CONVERSATION WITH – Jake Duzsik (Health) – Interview

IN CONVERSATION WITH – Jake Duzsik (Health) – Interview

Discipline Mag caught up with HEALTH frontman Jake to talk about their recent album 'RAT WARS' and their 2024 Australian tour.

Anthony Cooley

August 7, 2024

KEEP DISCIPLINE MAG ALIVE
BUY A T-SHIRT

On the night of the Melbourne leg of the HEALTH tour we were lucky enough to catch up for a chat with frontman Jake Duzsik.

Thanks for doing the interview today man, so how is the tour so far? You’ve played Adelaide and Sydney so far yeah?

Yeah no problem It kinda feels like the tour is just starting but also its almost over, because it’s just a quick 5 dates tour we’re almost done this weekend, other than that I am extraordinarily jetlagged, I know that’s a cliche thing to say but honestly it feels worse this tour than it ever has before.

How many times have you played Australia now?

I think this is our 4th or 5th time now, last time was when we did Dark Mofo so we only did two shows and then went down to Tasmania for that, but this time was the first time we’ve been able to do a full tour since then. We started our tour in Perth (which is probably not helping with the jet lag).

So I have to ask, the Bluey meme poster (below). Who made that shit haha, that’s so funny.

So John (the bassist of HEALTH) would know exactly who made that but I’m pretty sure it came from our discord group. We have a pretty active group of fans on our discord page and they constantly help us out with making the bespoke memes. We have a very active meme oriented legion of fans.

It’s so dope man cuz obviously the band is a serious industrial electronic band but having this funny side to it kinda makes the music way cooler.

I think the dichotomy is just how people live their lives as well. The music and visuals are deadly serious but then, the funny stuff is just reflective of how people really are. You know like when you’re depressed you tend to gravitate towards dark beautiful music, but at the same time you’re also probably just looking at stupid shit on the internet.

Yeah for sure its way more realistic in terms of the human condition.

It’s also like, it’s difficult to articulate.. Whenever anyone projects a false sense of seriousness people can generally see right through it, like come on I know you’re just on your phone half the time looking at dumb shit dude.

VIEW OUR COVERAGE OF HEALTH LIVE AT THE NORTHCOTE THEATRE

Tell us about the new album – did you guys make the tracks separately during the COVID era? Or did it fall into a period after?

So Rat Wars was made just post COVID, our previous releases during COVID era were more collaborative related (the disco albums) which worked great because we could all record remotely. With Rat Wars though that was the first time we were able to get together and write in 2022/2023.

I have to say I’ve been following your albums for years now and Rat Wars is hands down the darkest you’ve made so far. Was it always a goal of the band to make things heavier and bleaker over time?

I mean a lot of things are just like, you make plans but that’s not really how life works out. Shit just happens. But yeah we definitely have always made a concentrated effort to evolve each record and to have it be a new aesthetic statement and something you would never confuse for a prior release. Each record’s gonna have its own distinct identity with songs that don’t feel interchangeable with another record, so in the process of doing that there’s just always been an evolution. And I think in terms of getting darker and heavier that was just where our interests have been at in recent times.

In terms of the electronics, I’m curious how things sort of change each record, I note that Rat Wars feels like it has a way more Godflesh/EBM vibe to the production than the previous two albums and I’m curious how you guys arrived at that sound.

I think that finishing up the collab records, we sort of understood where we were at creatively and what kind of sound we wanted, we know wanted to make a very dark sort of record and with regards to Godflesh I think we were comfortable enough with ourselves to try and make something that was referential but also felt new at the same time. So we were kinda trying to pay homage to everything from Godflesh, to Nine Inch Nails, to Ministry to early 80s thrash metal.

For us we kind of started out as a post-punk band and to us all the industrial era bands we were talking about were all born from that original late 70s early 80s era Killing Joke style post-punk. So it felt like a natural outgrowth for us. Neo industrial is a fairly small genre that we think we comfortably exist in, however I think for us this was the first time when people asked us if this was an industrial record we were able to say “yeah pretty much this our version of an industrial record”.

How has your live process changed between the 3 of you in terms of making this record performable live?

It’s pretty similar honestly. I think probably the biggest change is having a higher production value for the stage show*.

I think for me personally the biggest change is having to sing way more and to play different styles of guitar which resulted in me having to expand in the kind guitar playing I’m doing and tones I get (Swapping between big beautiful clean fender reverb style sounds and thrashy fucked up metal parts.)

*(authors note: they weren’t kidding the lights show for their performance was insane)

Have you got much planned after this tour in terms of recording or more tours?

I’d like to just keep writing as much as possible because one of the things I’ve become acutely aware of is how much I detest the sort of arbitrated hibernation of creativity around touring cycles. Because bands like ours will sit and make a record and then once that record is done we are absolutely at the top of our game creatively in terms of knowing what we want to make and in terms of communicating with each other and being in touch with ourselves. But that’s when you stop, but it’s not when you should stop you should absolutely keep writing but instead you go on tour and then sometimes a band doesn’t write anything new for like 3 fucking years and I hate that. So just trying to strike a balance between touring/recording so we’re constantly engaged in both is critical.

Otherwise for the rest of the year, we have some US festivals and then do a headline Europe headliner, so still a pretty busy year.