HolyName is an Orthodox Christian metal band that was formed during Covid with Sleeping Giant frontman, Tommy Green. From humble beginnings, the genesis of the project came into fruition when Tommy and his friend Joe Holt set out to create a worship mixtape during lockdown with the help of the church community. Tommy had a couple of acoustic tracks which Joe converted into fully-charged metal instrumentals and the project grew arms and legs from there, releasing their self-titled debut album in 2023. For me, I first discovered HolyName last year when I was skirting through “recommended” videos on YouTube’s homepage, stumbling across a track titled “Fall on Your Knees” which featured Korn’s Brian “Head” Welch. The music video showcased HolyName’s heavy Orthodox imagery, and their sound was an interesting mix of ethereal drone and chug-y metal, which played into the band’s concepts pretty well.
With that hasty backstory in mind, I should preface the point that my knowledge on religious artists/bands is parochial at best; nevertheless, as an agnostic who’s had a greater spiritual awakening in recent years, I’ve actually enjoyed exploring this type of music, listening to just enough of it to gauge what’s well-executed and what’s vanilla worship slop. Where does HolyName fall on that spectrum – are they on the level of John Van Deusen, My Epic and Future of Forestry, or are they a modern-day Skillet or Hawk Nelson? For me, it’s somewhere in between.
HolyName is a competently crafted metal record that tends to suffer because of its conceptual fidelities. Their sound is self-proclaimed “holy drone violent worship”, so, as the appellation suggests, songs on
HolyName are heavy, repetitious and don’t pull any punches on the subject matter. To use the above examples for a second. John Van Deusen, My Epic and Future of Forestry all have diverging styles, but the lyrics are what bring them all together: articulate, thoughtful, and done in a way that even an atheist could appreciate and enjoy. Conversely, the approach here is brazen and visceral, which is absolutely fine considering the genre in which the band resides, but the trade-off is that without that nuance to ease you in, if you’re not after music that swings a religious sledgehammer into your face at full force, this will likely make you recoil in horror. Essentially, the tracks on
HolyName are metal hymns and were made with reverence to Christ and the eastern orthodoxy, so it’s worth keeping that in mind.
Of course, HolyName isn’t trying to be anything other than what it’s presenting. In Tommy’s mind HolyName is here to keep his faith alive, brought to life at a time when he felt like it was dying. As such, this feels like an attempt to revitalise and keep the faith relevant, without sacrificing its teachings. While it’s up to the individual to decide whether they’ve done that or not,
HolyName is nevertheless a solid and interesting album, bustling with guest spots that largely take on the harsh vocal duties. Green’s reverb-laden vocals lay softly atop the distorted guitars and drums, while the likes of Eric Gregson and Ryan Clark deliver the guttural, filthy vocal sections. The record is filled with hard-hitting breakdowns, blast beats, pinch harmonics, and all the usual characteristics we’re accustomed to hearing in metalcore – with the likes of “The Sect” and “They See” being notable highlights, and “Celestial” bringing a faster-paced hardcore edge to the tracklisting. However, the chink in the armour for me comes from Green himself, who brings a homogenous and at times flat performance to the songs, never really formulating distinct melodies together, rather saying his lyrics atonally. Because of this and a couple other creative choices, at fifty minutes this
feels like a long album and could have benefitted from some editing. Ironically, “Fall on Your Knees” – the very track that brought my attention to the band – goes on for far too long and repeats the same things for eight-and-a-half minutes. Despite its nice ethereal vibe, it’s not enough to listen to the same drum patterns and chugging guitars for that long. Couple that with tracks like “My Way” bogging the pacing down and it dilutes the more interesting moments on here, like the trap-metal tinged “Mr. Millstone”.
Still, while the band’s debut is far from perfect and its subject matter won’t be for everyone, there’s a lot of potential with HolyName. In spite of the album’s flaws, there’s more interesting stuff going on here than not. So, if you’re not religious but open-minded enough to overlook the obvious, this is worth listening to for its idiosyncratic elements; if you are a Christian and you like all walks of music, this is an easy sell.
