HolyName - Self-Titled

Christian music tends to have such a bad name. There is a lot of unique bands in the genre, but they share a similar problem to every other genre of music; it's full of stuff, so you have to sift through a ton of sand to find the gold. One thing though that I found, and quite to my surprise, is that Christian metal has a ton of hardcore and deathcore. There's a huge scene in the underground for it. These typically aren't my genres. I don't have any favorite bands in either genre in secular music, it's just not my thing.

HolyName hits a very strange intersect. It isn't standard anything; hardcore, metalcore, rock, just nothing. Instead it's something very unique.

Let's talk about it.

Well produced, heavy, and simplistic. Kind of as your faith should be simple. You aren't coming into this album looking for shred and salad; you're coming looking for power and intensity. The whole album also has this sort of... I want to call it old school, but that's not what it is. I want to call it worship feel, but again, that's not really what it is. Hopefully giving you that confusion gives you clarity.

The drums specifically are super tight and punchy the whole record. I really appreciate when bands have drummers that actually bring dynamic and are highlighted in their songs. When this guy does a heavy blast, you'll feel it. When he does double bass, you feel it. He also keeps a very hardcore feel to them all, so you aren't simply overwhelmed by drums during the songs.

Guitars and bass tend to stick also being punchy. There's always something interesting about guitars that treat their instrument percussively rather than melodically. It was the appeal of nu-metal honestly. It is also basically the foundation of what makes hardcore a thing. The noticeable lack of melody is what makes the music unique which is weird coming from me, because I don't typically like that. Unlike a lot of the metalcore and melodeath, which is typically my bread and butter, this doesn't focus on melody... it focuses on tone.

Vocals. I first listened to the live performance they did. When I went back to the record, the vocals honestly bothered me. The songs are mostly clean sung, but they decided to soak his voice in reverb and delay, giving it almost an unclear and airy feel. I could hear a clear choice of melody, good lyrics, and great delivery, but it was really hard to get past that strange feeling. Funny enough though, all the screamers on this album are guest vocals, mostly from Brooks (I think it's Impending Doom's vocalist, but not entirely sure), and none of them have this same effect on them. I get why they made the choice, so he sounds like he's in a great hall or stage, and you hear the voice haunting the walls around you and bouncing around (it fits the heavy Christian church theme of what they did). It just took a while to get used to.

If you aren't Christian, I don't think you'll enjoy this band nor their lyrics. They are NOT coating or burying references to Jesus or the Bible in their music. The band is called HolyName, the album cover has a cross that pops out, and it's the forefront of their music. They are unashamedly and undoubtedly followers of Christ. I say this because I oppose them to a band like Demon Hunter, who tends to write music with Biblical influence, but you don't hear the name of Jesus once. Some would consider that a bad thing, but I think it's about the intended audience.

Demon Hunter writes songs to reach the lost (intentional or not). HolyName writes songs for the body of Christ.

Every song shows this. The very first song's chorus says "Jesus I've come to be with you" over and over. Creed (Rev Gang) is a very blatant confession of faith; the whole song just lays out everything he (and I guess the Rev Gang) believes in a single song. Celestial's lyrics seem to be as if aliens to came down, he'd challenge them to bow to their creator God as well. Perpetua is a song about God directly. They also have some other things in there, still Christian focused, but a song like St. Dismas focuses around a church problem. There's also some interlude tracks thrown in there like Follower - which is just a minute or so of a profession of faith.

The lyrics, while not sitting to me as directly poetic or anything, are very direct and well chosen. Their delivery is wrapped in a haunting sort of way. They cover interesting topics as well. I think they go to set a vibe and be confessional rather than being some high adventure of word play and depth.

I am a Christian and it was a bit of difficult to get through. You hear these clips online, specifically of the dude from Korn on Fall to Your Knees, and it sounds awesome, looks awesome, and so you get the album and put that song on, only to realize that it's a LONG song. So you start going to other songs, and if you're like me, you don't listen from front to back, you listen on shuffle. It was a weird experience. What ended up happening was that I like a song enough, I'd listen to it, then I'd like a second song. So on.

Overall though, speaking from a Christian point of view and likes metal, this was a unique experience. While after listening to it for several months, there's about half the album I don't turn on anymore, the other half is killer. I would love to see them clean up the sound a bit more and drop another album.