Back in the late ’00s, HEALTH were one of the most exhilarating groups in LA’s overcrowded rock scene. At 2010’s Bumbershoot, they put on a fantastic show (“a vital blast of apocalyptic weirdness,” as my review on Line Out put it), but I lost track of their recording career after 2009’s bombastic industrial-rock stunner Get Color. Just now catching up with 2015’s Death Magic, it’s apparent HEALTH have changed. Here they sound like a more butch Pet Shop Boys or a less angsty Nine Inch Nails, though flashes of their past brutality do occasionally surface. Narcotized melody has usurped galvanic noise as the dominant force in HEALTH’s music. Some may view this as progress, others as a misguided march toward “maturity.” by Dave Segal