As if the multi-genre act couldn't get any cooler, HEALTH’s 2023 album RAT WARS has been expanded with the recent release of RAT WARS ULTRA EDITION. The expanded/deluxe edition includes a new track called “FREE TO DIE,” featuring guest vocals from Filter’s Richard Patrick.
The song opens with echoing guitar strums and airy, melancholic vocals, but soon erupts into industrial-crunching guitar chords and a grinding, mechanical four-on-the-floor beat. Jake Duzsik (vocals) and Patrick deliver a heavy-hitting masterpiece, with the sobering lines: "I’m tired of living/I’m tired of feeling like this."
You can listen to the track below.
RAT WARS ULTRA EDITION features the original album alongside extras, including “FREE TO DIE,” a collaborative “ASHAMED” redux with Chvrches' Lauren Mayberry, HEALTH’s cover of Deftones’ “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” from Spotify Singles, and their track “THE DRAIN” with Bad Omens and SWARM, which first appeared on Bad Omens’ CONCRETE JUNGLE [THE OST].
Jake Duzsik spoke to James Mudrak at New Noise Magazine late last year on the original release of RAT WARS, and much of what was stated has been expounded upon within the Ultra Edition.
I just wanted something that communicated that sort of almost primal desperation. Like, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, there’s just something that’s so visceral and unnerving about combining those two words.
Because one is like, it’s synonymous with just no varnishing of civility, just survival, like that’s what rats do. They just fucking survive. It’s dirty and merciless. Then that imagery in conjunction with the word “wars,” at least in me, it immediately invokes a feeling of desperation. I feel like that’s what the record sounds like and that’s how I felt when we made it. That’s what it is sort of evocative of.
