The story of Holy Wars begins neither in a rehearsal space nor in a manager’s office. On April 25, 2015, Kat Leon learned that her 67-year-old father had suddenly died of a heart attack. At the time, the singer was living in Los Angeles, performing with Sad Robot, and preparing for the usual club circuit: recordings, shoots, and shows. A few months later, on October 10, her mother, Sharon Poulak, died after suffering from pulmonary hypertension and sarcoidosis. Less than half a year passed between the two deaths.
The music stopped. Leon disbanded her previous project, stopped performing, and almost disappeared from the stage for two years. Short texts and melodies remained in her diaries—Kat later called them “letters to grief.” Guitarist and producer Nicholas “Nick” Perez, her partner since their time in Sad Robot, was by her side. The songs “Back to Life,” “Orphan,” and “Mother Father” grew out of those recordings, and a new duo emerged.
The name Holy Wars described a very specific state. When asked how she was doing, Leon answered: “Every day, there is a holy war inside me.” There was also a second, more unpleasant family meaning: according to the singer, her brother cut ties with the family when they refused to join his church. The religious metaphor did not arise merely to create an impressive logo.
In 2017, Holy Wars presented the Mother Father cycle. First came the three-song Mother section, followed by Father; on November 3, the material was assembled into a six-track release. Leon wrote each composition as a separate stage of grieving, while Perez built harsh guitar parts, layers of noise, and dark electronics around her voice.
The closing track, “Mother Father,” sounded quieter than the rest of the material, but struck more precisely. The video included real home recordings of Kat’s parents, filmed when they were still young. The more daring detail was the inclusion of her parents’ final voice messages, preserved on the singer’s phone. Leon spent a long time wondering whether she had the right to turn them into part of a public work. In the end, she kept them. Not a reconstruction. Their real voices.
Against the backdrop of the Los Angeles scene of the late 2010s, Holy Wars were inconvenient for cataloging. They were not pure alternative metal, although Perez’s low-tuned guitars and heavy riffs gave them enough weight. They were not industrial, despite the programming and mechanical rhythm. They were not dark pop, although Leon could push a chorus almost into radio territory. She later called the duo’s approach a “blender”: her love of Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, and musical theater mixed with punk, metal, and Perez’s Las Vegas background.
During its early years, the project existed without a major deal. Leon and Perez composed music for television and film trailers, and the income from that work allowed them to record their own material. Sometimes synchronization worked better than an advertising campaign: WWE used “Welcome to My Hell,” after which Holy Wars’ audience noticeably expanded. The next single, “Little Godz,” appeared on Spotify rock playlists, including Rock This, New Alt, and New Noise.
The live format was larger than the studio duo. At different times, drummer Greg Garman, who had also worked with Hollywood Undead, Filter, and other artists, appeared behind the kit. The creative core, however, did not change: Leon was responsible for the vocals, lyrics, and visual concepts, while Perez handled the guitars, arrangements, and much of the production. They were not only colleagues, but also a couple. On tour, romance quickly gave way to loading equipment, soundchecks, and arguments over show details—a thoroughly mundane marriage inside a rock ’n’ roll enterprise.
On April 29, 2022, the first full-length album, EAT IT UP SPIT IT OUT, was released. Its focus shifted from personal grief to a society accustomed to consuming content faster than it can process it. The title sounded like an instruction for the social-media feed: swallow it, spit it out, scroll on.
In “TV Dinner,” the idea received an almost caricatural embodiment. Director Erin Knifeh cast Leon as Birthday Betsy, a frenzied housewife from 1950s advertising America. The character destroys her orderly interior and wages war on a frozen dinner while the song dissects the economics of likes and the transformation of art into a disposable product. A family line appears in the lyrics: “Dad was an auto mechanic, Mom read Tarot.” Even Holy Wars’ social satire still found its way home.
The record was uneven, but not sterile. Hip-hop phrasing could crash into a nu-metal riff, while a pop chorus could emerge from industrial thunder. This flexibility made it difficult for agents to come up with a convenient label, but helped onstage: Holy Wars could play alongside alternative bands, metal acts, and electronic artists without looking like accidental guests in any of those lineups.
In August 2023, the duo signed with Pale Chord Music, a label connected to BMG that releases recordings through Rise Records. The first single of the new chapter was “Deus Ex Machina.” The song combined clipped rap, electronics, and low-tuned guitars, while its lyrics attacked the algorithmic production of art and anxiety surrounding artificial intelligence. The subject arrived at the right time: generative services were already filling the industry, while musicians were still trying to figure out who would be the first to lose their job.
On November 10, the six-track EP Cult Classic was released. Holy Wars used the vocabulary of old horror, but hid the monster not in a basement. It lived inside the human being, feeding on envy, depression, the hunger for influence, and an imposed version of the “American dream.” In the title track, Leon described society as a pack of “cannibals in suits,” while Perez’s arrangement threw drum and bass against a heavy riff. Fast. Angry. Without a sermon from the pulpit.
The video for “Cult Classic,” directed by Deven Bassi, staged a club nightmare of fire, blood, and a reference to Salma Hayek’s vampire dance in the film “From Dusk Till Dawn.” In 2023, Holy Wars also appeared at Welcome to Rockville, Sonic Temple, So What?!, Furnace Fest, Louder Than Life, and Aftershock. A project that had begun with intimate material about grief had reached stages where quiet confessions usually lose out to the roar of generators.
In 2024, the scale of the live shows grew sharply. Holy Wars played a series of sold-out arena shows in Puerto Rico with Evanescence, toured the United States and Mexico with The Warning, and performed at Inkcarceration, Rock Fest, Rocklahoma, Knotfest Iowa, and Mayhem Festival. In September of that same year, the duo played seven dates on The Warning’s U.S. tour, from Boston’s Big Night Live to The Basement East in Nashville.
The following summer brought Rock am Ring, Rock im Park, the Czech festival Rock for People, and Britain’s Download, while between festivals Holy Wars opened club shows for Kittie. Perez later explained the change simply: the first songs had been written for the Los Angeles club The Echo, which held roughly 300 people; the new ones were written with an understanding of how a riff needed to work in an arena.
Behind the rise onstage was another death. In 2024, Kat’s sister died. The loss returned the singer to the state from which Mother Father and the name Holy Wars had once emerged. This time, Leon did not stop working. She turned the second blow into the foundation of a second album.
Shadow Work / Light Work was released on April 24, 2026, through Pale Chord Music under license from Rise Records. The twelve compositions are divided into two thematic halves. The Shadow Work side consists of “O Death,” “I Feel Everything,” “Shadowalker,” “Crucify,” “Skin Deep,” and “I.F.O.Y.G.” The Light Work side contains “Proof of Existence,” “Kill the Light,” “Ceremony,” “Everything You,” “Holy Unholy,” and “Metamorphosis.”
Perez retained his role as the main producer and architect of the sound; Ruben Cardenas, Josh Gilbert, and Cody Quistad of Wage War contributed to individual tracks. Leon and Perez began writing “Crucify” with Quistad in Nashville back in 2023, although they did not know at the time whether the song would become part of the album. Mixing and mastering were handled by Joseph McQueen. As a result, the old club sharpness did not disappear, but gained a wider range—from the almost ritualistic opening of “O Death” to the large-scale choruses on the second side.
This is not an album about overcoming grief. It is more a record about the moment when a person stops wearing trauma as armor and examines it in the light—a procedure that is not particularly pleasant. Leon described the concept without therapeutic sweetness: first, you have to see the parts of yourself you do not want to look at, and only then can you search for a way out.
When the singer was once asked whether she wanted to talk about death for the rest of her life, her answer was brief: “No.” But then she remembered an interview with a schoolgirl who had lost her mother, and the advice she had given her: write down everything she misses until memory starts erasing the small details. Her mother’s hands, for example. “I don’t remember what they looked like anymore,” Leon said, “until I look at mine.”
