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Aug 7, 2015A monstrous album on which its electronic and industrial mystique has matured to represent an absorption of the band’s discography, injected with a serum of growth hormones.
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Aug 7, 2015HEALTH have diligently crafted an astounding pop record...one which could be enjoyed for the next six years, if necessary.
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Aug 4, 2015HEALTH have never sounded as focused as they do here. These are sounds that will grab you by the hair and drag you where you need to go. It’s control of a potentially unpleasant, entirely intoxicating sort.
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Dec 7, 2015More than nihilism, the songs on Death Magic ultimately resolve that what’s important is loving and understanding each other because there’s nothing else. Going in that direction at the same time as their songs go in a much more immediately ingratiating one is a bold move for HEALTH, and here it pays off.
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Aug 11, 2015The battle between melody and noise at the heart of 'DEATH MAGIC' is a fascinating one, and the twelve songs on which it plays out are damn near bulletproof. Welcome to the most terrifying pop album of 2015.
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Aug 7, 2015How the listener takes Death Magic defines everything, but once again, even at their most open and exposed HEALTH completely defy definition.
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Aug 3, 2015The shift toward less discord and more opportunity for a listener to sing along may initially throw off a seasoned HEALTH fan, but it is sure to introduce new ears to one of the most accessible noise bands of the last decade. [Sep 2015, p.98]
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Jul 31, 2015Only the plodding ballad ‘Hurt Yourself’ fails to earn its place on the track list, and on the whole Death Magic makes a grander statement than its more rudimentary predecessors. It sounds like Health finally know what they want.
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Aug 3, 2015After a while, even unremitting noise and relentless nihilism becomes rote and, frankly, kind of boring. Without the occasional beam of light, it's hard to actually appreciate how dark--or how good--a band like HEALTH can actually be.
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Aug 5, 2015Here they are again, maybe smashing their usual double-header of noise album à remix album into both at once, for once, the edgy cuts and the cutting edge and—cinema, the uncanny valley, dead eyes, pure pop, DEATH MAGIC.
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Aug 12, 2015For once, the band’s chemistry between melody and noise is the driving force of their sound, and for every beautiful moment that pops out of the record, there’s another disturbing or uncomfortable one to match it.
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Aug 10, 2015There is the air of HEALTH now being at a cross roads. Their rampaging style of yore feels a little constrained and tamed by the booming production and ‘nice’ singing, but at the same time they are beginning to write some pretty stupendous ‘proper’ songs.
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Aug 7, 2015Death Magic presents a 2010s version of HEALTH that fits in with the likes of the Soft Moon and Blanck Mass while delivering their most accessible music to date.
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Aug 7, 2015Though some fans will no doubt be put off by the band's new direction, anything more than a cursory listen reveals that HEALTH haven't made some great leap into the pop void. Rather, they've more fully embraced something that was always inherent to their music in the first place.
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Aug 3, 2015What always distinguished HEALTH was their ability to go off into a maelstrom of ominous disrepair, and losing sight of that leads its core sound to suffer regardless of whether they alter their approach.
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Aug 3, 2015While HEALTH and Get Color were cohesive collections of songs that created a snapshot in time of where the artists were when creating them, listening to Death Magic feels like we’re seeing not just the band they are currently, but all the bands they could be.
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Q MagazineJul 31, 2015Death Magic feels like the work of a band who have pulled themselves together, but might be more fun falling apart. [Sep 2015, p.110]
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UncutJul 31, 2015Cool or not, at least they're going for it. [Sep 2015, p.76]
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Jul 31, 2015There’s a locked-away sadness to Death Magic’s deadened, industrial take on electronic music.
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Aug 10, 2015When they let some light in they’re almost interesting, but for the most part Health are eternal sixth-formers--disgruntled and as if unsure what it is they want to say.
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Aug 6, 2015The vocals, which in the past did a lot with a little and felt incantatory, androgynous and liminal, now sound uncannily like Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, a pseudo-teenaged smirk behind the frown.
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Aug 27, 2015The end result is 40 minutes of music that drain the listener’s energy and will.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 30 out of 39
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Mixed: 7 out of 39
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Negative: 2 out of 39
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Aug 14, 2015
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Aug 13, 2015
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Aug 7, 2015