Grief is crushing. However, what emerges from that pressure can be darkly beautiful. In the wake of three tragedies in her life, Holy Wars founder Kat Leon and her partner Nick Perez have discovered that firsthand. The project began as a way for Kat to process the death of her parents in 2015. After a reality TV appearance earned her a cosign from judge Alice Cooper, she sought a creative collaborator to match the intensity she was carrying. Enter, multi-instrumentalist Nick.
“I very much connect to shadow and I think he’s more light – that’s why we work,” Kat laughs. Their differences – and shared instincts – are what made the whole thing click. The Californian band’s titanic sound gives Kat space to channel everything from breakups to self-examination with relentless energy.
“We always say a really great song is one that makes you feel happy and sad at the same time,” Kat says. “We always have this rule: it can’t be bad-sad all the time. We really want to empower people… even if a song’s context is darker, we’re always asking, ‘What does the listener need to feel from this?’”
For Holy Wars, that means dragging those darker instincts into the open through Kat’s near-whispers and full-throated howls, matched by Nick’s body-blow riffs.
A great song makes you feel happy and sad at the same time
Kat Leon
“I care more about my words than even about my singing ability,” she says. “It’s always from a place of reflection and pain, loss, grieving, anger, jealousy – I’m not inspired when I’m happy!”
But that doesn’t stop Kat from hoping for brighter days. “I do feel like at some point we’re going to be like, ‘Now what? I’ve said it all. What do I say now?’ Maybe I’ll have to do an anonymous project to really exercise if I even have that ability to write a fun song.”
Few bands hit this hard emotionally and make it sound this big, balancing bruising riffs and electro-tinged textures with a human core. That balance peaks on their latest outing, Shadow Work / Light Work. After her sister’s death in 2024, the follow-up to 2022’s Eat It Up Spit It Out became what Kat calls “a metamorphosis for not just myself, but for us as a project.” But while devastation may have shaped Holy Wars, they’ll never be defined by it.
Shadow Work / Light Work is out now via Pale Chord