Health And Efficiency - This Heat review

A pretty good listen and an interesting release in the band's discography. You can definitely start to hear how the band is moving towards the post punk sound they'd use in Deceit but it still has a lot of remnants of their self titled which is pretty nice. The title track is really good and I like it a lot, the first half completely threw me off when I first listened to it because it was super upbeat. I knew it was supposed to be tongue in cheek with the lyrics but either way it was still a big surprise because I've been conditioned to expect this band to make music that is completely allergic to any sense of joy or consonance. It's still really good though and I enjoyed it a lot. Anyways the 2nd half of the title track is a completely different style that sounds much more mechanical, like I wouldn't call it industrial but it sorta sounds like machinery. I personally still think it's pretty good but it's very repetitive and goes on for the rest of the song, so imo it's weaker than the first half, but either way I still fw it, just not as much. After that there's Graphic/Varispeed, which I'll just call Varispeed, and it's a drone song. Yeah no I never liked drone that much and Varispeed is just 11 minutes of that, there's nothing else going on. I know self titled had a few drone elements but the difference is that album managed to use it in a way that makes it feel much more ominous and adds an extra layer of atmosphere to the songs. Really the only thing I think is interesting about Varispeed is that it'll sound completely different when played at different rpms, which as much as I don't like drone, is a really cool concept that I'd like to play around with someday. Yeah I know that's bound to happen whenever you slow down a drone song but tbf that was the whole point of the track and they released multiple printings of that song alone for that reason. Still, it's not that good and so far it's probably This Heat's worst song, but idk for sure because they still have some other stuff I plan to review. I'm not gonna give this album a super low score just cos of Varispeed since I just always skip it whenever I listen to this record but that song does weigh down on the ep a lot overall especially since it's one of the only two songs here, idk I think it would've worked better as its own thing.

Rating: 6/10