A gaggle of laughter will be the first thing you hear…
This choir of cackling voices ominously opens For Your Health’s second full-length album, This Bitter Garden [3Dot Recordings]. You’ll never know if they’re laughing at you or with you, and that’s part of the fun. These thirteen songs sound like a hellish joyride through basement-born hardcore, gritty heavy metal, post-rock, unassuming pop-punk, and D.I.Y. industrial blown up for the big screen with the scope of a film score. For as dynamic as it is, the danger never waivers for the Columbus, OH six-piece—Hayden Rodriguez (They / Them) [vocals], Nick Marzluf (He / Him) [guitar], Rosa Delgado (She / Her) [guitar], Johnny Deborde (He / Him) [bass], Sim Morales (They / Them) [keys, vocals].
It’s not just the sound of a band clawing their way out of the underground; it’s the sound of an unpredictable force wielding its power without giving a fuck.
“These songs are a true distillation of all the sonic ideas we’ve explored previously and our different interests,” Rosa comments. “Hayden has a strong appreciation for film. We’re coupling his world-building and atmosphere with the immediacy, urgency, and brutality of our early material. We’re always striving to challenge ourselves. This Bitter Garden is an expansion of everything before.”
“Everyone’s voice comes through,” adds Nick. “We’ve progressed, but it still feels like For Your Health.”
“In my head, This Bitter Garden has a dual nature,” Hayden states. “You can grow fruits and vegetables in a garden to feed people, or you can grow poisonous plants. One of the main thematic elements is, ‘What happens when a place where you grow nourishment turns rotten?’ There are other themes too. You continue to nurture resentment even when it’s so far past what you intended it to be. You end up on a path.”
The group’s own path has twisted and turned. Residing in a small town in rural Ohio, Hayden initially cut his teeth on the drums at 19-years-old. He performed in various local bands. Eventually, he relocated to Columbus. As the story goes, his Gouge Away shirt caught the attention of another musician at a restaurant, leading to a jam session and planting the seeds for what would become For Your Health. An early incarnation of the band emerged during 2018. “It’s crazy, man,” he notes. “We went from goofing off and doing weird emo shit to getting major reviews and touring in less than two years.”
They managed to make waves in the midst of the Pandemic with the release of their full-length debut, In Spite Of. Regarding the latter, Pitchfork proclaimed, “For Your Health are tearing shit down because they have such a clear plan for a world they’d like to build in its place—one without abusers, clout-chasers, dishonest artists, cops (obviously), and most of all, genre.” Brooklyn Vegan attested, “The album offers the musical diversity of a double album in the span of about 20 minutes,” while Stereogum summed it up best, “In Spite Of is uniquely potent.” In support of the record, they logged countless miles on the road, sharing stages with everyone from Escuela Grind and The Callous Dao Boys to He Is Legend and Greyhaven.
Even with this momentum, it took four years for the group to deliver a follow-up. Though it would invariably prove worth the wait, the musicians endured industry bullshit, lineup changes, creative differences, and self-doubt to shock This Bitter Garden to life.
“The band has been through a lot,” Hayden admits. “We’re very stable now, but we’ve almost killed each other a few times. It’s like we were killing ourselves to do this, and that’s how much we love the music. We started as a four-piece in my basement. I had a house venue where I booked shows, and there was a gig coming up. We formed to do the show. It was fun, but it snowballed. Members came and went. Label conversations started and stopped. There was the Pandemic. We went through three iterations of The Bitter Garden. The fact we created this album and we’re happy with it means everything to me.”
Completing 13 songs in 15 days, For Your Health recorded the music with producer Eric Hudson at a studio “repurposed from an old church in the sticks of Illinois.” Sessions typically began at 10am and often didn’t wrap up until 4am. They pushed the envelope, infusing acoustic guitar, live piano, and keys into the soundscape.
“We set out to craft a very heavy record,” Nick goes on. “At the same time, we experimented and played around with a lot of sounds.”
“It was the first recording where we got to express ourselves as the full band we’ve been playing as for the last four years,” Hayden notes.
On the opener and first single “Davenport (A Rotten Pear),” those aforementioned laughs dissolve into screams and squealing guitar. A trudging groove underlines manic vocals, turning on a dime with a breakdown topped off by a frenetic riff. “It was actually the first song that we wrote together as a unit,” Nick recalls. “It ups the intensity of LP1, but with more refinement.”
“Being frank, I wrote it on the tail end of a bad professional experience,” confesses Hayden. “Somebody fucked us over heavily. It was messy and awful for our personal lives as well. The song was like a release.”
“Flowers For The Worst Of Them” gallops away from dissonant feedback and into the embrace of a venomously catchy refrain. The madness subsides just long enough for disarmingly lush acoustic guitar to carry a haunting bridge back up to a chantable crescendo.
“It deals in part with my personal relationship with my Catholic upbringing,” Hayden reveals. “I’m examining what it means to me as an adult who has spent many years away from religion. In the past couple of years, I’ve been thinking about faith and how it relates to my life and the lives of others.”
Clocking in at under two minutes, “Gaia Wept” engages a full-on sensory assault with its percussive beatdown and throat-piercing screams. “Musically, it’s an ass beater,” Nick grins. “It’s one of our most intense songs.”
“I’m vegan and straight edge,” Hayden notes. “I thought about what a straight edge track would be like if For Your Health wrote it. Lyrically, it’s about people littering cigarette butts, which is one of the biggest pieces of pollution in the ocean.”
Then, there’s “In The Valley Of Weeping.” It kicks into high gear, culminating on an ethereal catharsis accented by spacey keys. “To me, it’s a meditation on grief,” muses Rosa. “Relationships change for various reasons, and death is the be-all end-all.”
The trip concludes with “Hostel Elysia.” In many ways, the track evokes every side of For Your Health—from its repugnantly emotional exorcism to the raw beauty threaded into the brutality.
“It’s the epilogue or summary,” Nick says. “It’s atmospheric, and Hayden’s vocal delivery is so honest.”
Ultimately, For Your Health sound reborn on This Bitter Garden.
“Each member put their all into every aspect of the record,” Nick concludes. “We painstakingly worked to make the songs what they are. We care so much. This Bitter Garden is the best version of this collective.”
“The way I feel about the band is as intense as the music itself,” Hayden leaves off. “To me, it’s such a massive part of my life. If I woke up tomorrow and didn’t have it, I wouldn’t know what to do. For Your Health is everything.”