JD: At the time, in the Pitchfork world, there were questions of whether or not we were selling out. But in retrospect, that was a linchpin moment that allowed us to stick around. Getting introduced to that universe of people who are very online made it easier to keep talking to fans during COVID-19. When we started doing collaboration records, a lot of those people knew us not from the first era of our band, but from playing Max Payne. There are all these things that are a domino effect that you cannot predict.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve also been one of the most intense live bands in L.A. for decades. That must have helped.<\/p>\n
JF: That\u2019s how you make the deepest connection to the band. The cool phenomenon we\u2019re seeing at these shows is that some of these kids have never been to a show before. We came up going to the Smell, where everything was about playing live. The records were cassettes that sounded like ass.<\/p>\n
JD: It is very different from now, where someone has to figure out how to present their music live, and they don\u2019t really know how to, and it\u2019s this reverse pressure. When we started, the way that you would get more bookings and more exposure was to be a good live band. We\u2019ve always presented this in a very physical, cathartic way that feels like a show. The biggest thing to fight against as you age is that your fans age too, so if you can\u2019t replenish those new impressions, they\u2019re going to be disappointed in you.<\/p>\n
BM: We cut our teeth in these various DIY spaces, where everyone was trying to be the best in some way, but also accepting and encouraging. We practiced four times a week. We always wanted to play our best and make sure the thing was as tight as possible. For something as wacky as \u201cCourtship<\/a>,\u201d we went over that so, so many times.<\/p>\n Which is the opposite of how young acts get seen today, where they have a hit song but have to catch up to get good live.<\/p>\n JD: We were kids when we went on tour with Nine Inch Nails, when suddenly you\u2019re going from this completely DIY underground space to where the language of presenting music is at the highest echelon, and seeing that as something to aspire to. If your band keeps growing, you have to keep growing. <\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen bands that got a lot more immediate traction than we did, who jumped venue sizes five times, and they didn\u2019t have the guidance or perspective to scale a show. There isn\u2019t a way to fill that room with something congruent, and then people don\u2019t want to come back. There are these sea change moments for young bands that don\u2019t know how to respond or calibrate to them. But they\u2019ve been so incremental for us that we\u2019re able to adjust to it.<\/p>\n Is it easier to grow older in metal and industrial music? You\u2019re all in your mid 40s now.<\/p>\n JD: What are you talking about? I\u2019m 31.<\/p>\n Sure.<\/p>\n JF: Metal respects their elders in a way that\u2019s kind of unheard of in other genres.<\/p>\n JD: They aren\u2019t doing the calculus of \u201cIs this band cool anymore? Should I be wearing band shirts at this age?\u201d They don\u2019t give a s\u2014. And when you have a culture that is comprised of people like that, I think it\u2019s just a lot easier to maintain that connection with fans.<\/p>\n Look at the amount of people that are like, \u201cI was in a noise band, then I was a house DJ, then I started making modular synth techno, and then I started doing peptide podcasts.\u201d Metal guys are just like, \u201cI like Tool. I have always liked Tool, and I will not change.\u201d<\/p>\n Did growing up in DIY culture prepare you for the modern music industry, where you have to be self-sufficient with every aspect of your career?<\/p>\n JF: I worry, because kids ask me for advice, and my advice would be crazy outdated.<\/p>\n JD: As bands scale, you are a mobile merch company. That is the way that money is generated on a tour, because the overhead of touring is just horribly expensive. As ticket prices for shows have skyrocketed, you need to give people a legitimate reason to go and spend that money.<\/p>\n All of us came up on show culture, where you could go to multiple shows a week. And now, that is financially reckless behavior. So we learned the merch lesson very early.<\/p>\n Your \u201cDon\u2019t Kill Yourself<\/a>\u201d hat is such an instantly recognizable subcultural gesture.<\/p>\n JF: Even in the beginning, we were the merch kings of the Smell. Punk and metal bands, despite being anti-everything, they\u2019re amazingly branded. I see kids with Black Flag shirts to this day, it\u2019s never gone out of style.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve had the Health hotline number on merch, and John will actually answer it. Can you keep doing that as the band gets bigger?<\/p>\n JF: I only take calls in the livestream now, which has made my life easier. But people still text me daily and sometimes show up at my house. If we have to stop this stuff because we\u2019re too big, that\u2019s a wonderful problem to have that I don\u2019t see happening anytime soon. If you bumped into Lemmy at the Rainbow, he\u2019d still be like, \u201cLet\u2019s hang out.\u201d<\/p>\n JD: I have built it into my lore that I\u2019m never going to meet anybody. That\u2019s more about social anxiety than anything. The hotline was a joke that turned into a real thing. I remember reading Joe Strummer\u2019s biography and his whole thing was, after a Clash show, he would bring fans from the audience back to the dressing room and drink with them all night because they\u2019re a punk band, that\u2019s their ethos.<\/p>\n I think there\u2019s nothing cooler than when you meet an artist who had a storied career and they seem completely down to earth and easy to talk to, and not condescending or patronizing.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve had a long collaborative relationship with Nine Inch Nails. Now that you\u2019re closer to being an arena band too, what have they taught you about how to play experimental music at that scale?<\/p>\n JF: I love your confidence in us. We\u2019re on the precipice of total world war and global financial corruption. Anything can disappear in a second. But for me it\u2019s just anxiety. \u201cHow much does that cost?\u201d Every time you hit that pyro trigger, it\u2019s \u201chow much was that?\u201d<\/p>\n JD: Green Day might not need the same level of production, because there are songs that people want to sing along to. Bruce Springsteen \u2014 you just need lights and the Boss. Unfortunately for us, I think that we are in that category of bands like Nine Inch Nails that, if it does continue to scale, we will continue to do those things. It\u2019s not as though we have a bunch of huge singsong choruses where everybody can hold hands and get their phones out.<\/p>\n Nine Inch Nails is a fantastic example of this. Do you take the music seriously? Well, then take everything else seriously. You have to curate every way that you present everything. The vertical integration of the lighting, the merch, how those imagistic components correlate to the music.<\/p>\n That\u2019s good advice for younger bands like Bad Omens. What do they say they admire in Health?<\/p>\n JD: Noah from Bad Omens told me that \u201cDeath Magic\u201d was when he discovered the band. What I gleaned from it is that we look at the electronic elements of production almost from a pop perspective, that gets integrated into aggressive music. Whereas within cool-guy culture, things are a little bit more separated.<\/p>\n I look at bands like Sleep Token and Bad Omens or Turnstile or Knocked Loose, these phenomenon bands driving kids back to playing guitars. I think it\u2019s this \u201crage against the dying of the light\u201d thing, because people are existentially groping for some way out of just staring at their phones and having AI-generated, bot-curated culture jammed down their throats.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve never been a political band per se, but \u201cOrdinary Loss\u201d is such a blunt statement about how bleak everything feels right now.<\/p>\n JD: The joke is that I\u2019ve been writing the same goddamn song the whole time, and it just turned out that everything just got worse. When we were making our first record, we had a mood board for the visual landscape that we were trying to make music for. It was this Skynet, \u201cTerminator,\u201d \u201cMad Max\u201d future primitive sort of thing that now seems current and timely.<\/p>\n JF: \u201cYou guys make music so prescient for the times.\u201d Well, I\u2019d rather the band was doing worse and times were better.<\/p>\n JD: A German interviewer asked me, \u201cSo it seems as though this is all working quite well for your band. Do you want things to stay getting worse?\u201d<\/p>\n The band is obsessed with death, lyrically and aesthetically. But you\u2019ve had some real loss recently \u2014 you were close to Silent Servant and the Soft Moon<\/a>, who sadly passed. How did that affect you?<\/p>\n JF: I was personal friends with them. All of us are one degree away from someone who has died in the same way, and it\u2019s a big reason why we do stuff with End Overdose. Obviously, it\u2019s rock and roll, this stuff has always been a thing. When it happened, it was very, very sad.<\/p>\n JD: Drugs are dangerous, but they did not used to be so dangerous. We all know this from living in Los Angeles in nightlife culture. We\u2019ve all had friends who have been doing a lot of hard drugs for a long time. And then within a year, I knew five people who died from accidental fentanyl overdoses.<\/p>\n You have a song called \u201cDrugs Exist\u201d that alludes to that reality.<\/p>\n JF: I worry about the kids. It\u2019s still a scourge. That\u2019s why we really push people to test. Obviously, you\u2019ll be smarter to not do it, but that is an impossible message. It\u2019s like telling kids to stay abstinent, it\u2019s never gonna happen.<\/p>\n
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