One of the highlights of Nine Inch Nails' Lights in the Sky tour back in 2008 was the added pleasure of watching HEALTH—then a still relatively unknown bunch of L.A. noisemakers—manage to almost steal the show. Of all the acts that Trent Reznor picked to open dates on that tour, HEALTH seemed the like the most obvious heir apparent—a band using bizarro configurations of electronics and guitars to pummel the audience into submission. Theirs appeared to be a very Reznor-approved pursuit: technology employed in service of exploring some of the most base human impulses—to incite, to destroy, and to possibly cause deafness.

It says something about the nature of HEALTH's music that of their now six proper full-length releases, two are remix albums (2008's Disco and 2010's Disco2) and one is the soundtrack to a video game (2013's surprisingly excellent Max Payne 3). In fact, their music has often flourished best in remix form. Hearing the band's music stripped and reworked by the likes of Gold Panda, Crystal Castles, and CFCF (whose sinewy reworking of Get Color's "Before Tigers" remains a standout) shone a light on just what was frequently hidden underneath all of HEALTH's Boredoms-esque roar: namely vocalist Jacob Duzsik's feathery vocals and the band's nascent ear for melody. Given room to breathe, HEALTH's music reveals itself to be much more than "industrial disco"—it's also pop music.

It's been over half a decade since they released a studio album, and Death Magic is a bold, albeit occasionally jarring, step forward. In a recent Pitchfork interview the band happily extolled the virtues of Depeche Mode and Rihanna, all of which makes the outré pop leanings of Death Magic more understandable. Given the early singles teased from the album, there was every reason to think that Death Magic might just be business as usual—and in some ways it is. The first single,"New Coke", materialized via a music video that featured high-intensity blasts of rafter-shaking low-end (not to mention the most lovingly filmed slow-motion vomit shots ever captured in a music video). Similarly, "Men Today" is a riot of barely corralled tribal drums, overdriven synths, and unpredictable beats. The track is pristinely produced and appropriately mountain-sized (Andrew Dawson and Lars Stalfors contribute production duties throughout), but it's not exactly a radical reinvention. Once you dig deeper into the record, however, the dark clouds begin to part.

On Death Magic, the band finally embraces the pop impulses that seem to have always been lurking in their DNA. "Flesh World (UK)" comes swinging out of the gate like a house track—a dancefloor appropriate number with an appropriately grim chorus ("We die/ So what/ We're here") that only occasionally pauses to slam the listener face first into a wall of white noise before advising "Do all the drugs/ But don't hurt the ones you love." "Dark Enough" is a goth-pop power ballad in which Duzsik sings, "Does it make a difference if it's real?/ As long as I still say I love you?" It's the kind of sideways romantic admission that would have sounded out of place—or perhaps just totally unintelligible—on a previous HEALTH record.

The band's biggest and most shocking pop moment comes just halfway through on "Life"—a song that flirts with stadium-size pop sentiments that would not be out of place on mainstream radio or, say, playing during the closing credits of a teenage romantic comedy. To hear a band like HEALTH offer the sentiment—"Life is strange/ We die and we don't know why/ I don't know what I want but I know that I don't know what want/ Nobody does"—feels both exhilarating and perverse. Longtime fans and noise purists might balk, but it's refreshing. The more vulnerable, pop-friendly moments on "Life" and the sparkly "L.A. Looks"—in which Duzsik admits,"It's not love, but I still want you"—make for a much more dynamic and oddly compelling listen than just 45 minutes of synthetic squall.

Though they might bristle at the obvious comparison, it's hard not to notice the Reznorian qualities of Death Magic. With Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor married the formlessness of industrial music to radio-friendly pop melodies. The 12 tracks on Death Magic do much the same, neatly splitting the difference between exquisitely detailed bombast (more than anything they've done before, it's a record that demands a huge stereo system and/or an excellent set of headphones) and something more human. While they still don't have to worry about somehow getting accidentally swept up in the mainstream—a fate unlikely for a band still making scary songs about drugs and releasing vomit-soaked visuals—with Death Magic HEALTH wisely manage to sidestep the errors of so many other ostensibly "heavy" bands, who often chase after extremity to the point of becoming humorless cartoons. After 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.