Urban Lounge in Salt Lake City was buzzing the way first nights of tour always do. Loose cables, backpacks half open, bodies moving in and out of frame. It was the first show of their first headlining tour run, 18 shows in 30 days.

For production it’s just the band, a handful of crew, and their manager Max handling everything. Their own load in, load out, merch sales, content capture… The singer Patrick even edits their own content.

Early on it was clear to me that this band is fueled by something deeper than Spotify streams and Instagram likes.

The band takes a break with me on a small couch in the green room after setting up. Our session felt closer to a smoke break with your favorite coworkers during a shitty work shift, than it did a magazine interview.

Right away the boys debrief a problem with me happening outside the room. Slow Degrade can’t play the show because a member is under 21.

“They just wouldn’t let them in, so they can’t play,” the band tells me. There is frustration in the room, and a clear sense of empathy from the band. “Bro, they’re just resting up because they’ve been driving 20 plus hours.” It’s not lost on them the effort their supporting act has put in to be there.

It’s a ridiculous rule and an annoying start to tour, but it also says something about where Holywatr is now. They’re at a point where smaller artists want to join them, want to travel with them, want to be part of their orbit. When I mention that, they pause.

"It's really cool," Ice says. "Previously, it was the other way around."

Patrick shakes his head.

“It doesn’t even feel like we have that position. From the inside looking out, I still see all the hills we have to climb, and where we see Holywatr being – we’re far from that now. I understand that we make music and art that connects with people, but at the same time I don’t feel like the shit. I just feel like a dude.”

That tension between how far they’ve come and how much further they want to go never leaves the room during our session.

This is part of why I chose them for the feature. Holywatr isn’t the kind of band most readers expect to see in tmrw, since they’re a metal band. But when I think about what fingerprint I want to leave on the magazine, they make perfect sense. They’re a combination of so many things I believe in. A band that holds intention and chaos in the same hand. A band that seems to treat every project as an organism, not a product.

Being here, crammed in this green room while their tour warms up around them, feels like the right place to start.

I asked the band to reflect on their past creative processes, what it was like making their earlier works.

“Dude, you can take a walk down memory lane,” one of them says. “You remember when we were doing Psalms. It was like night and day. We were just trying to figure out how we wanted it to look and sound.”

The band was finding themselves through experimentation, a lot like they do now.

Patrick tells me the story of the face paint shown on the “Psalms” cover.

“I had a buzz with blonde hair, and one day we were shooting a sizzle reel for this short film called False Religion,” he says. “Either the day of or the day before, I was on FaceTime buzzing my hair. I forgot to put the guard on the blade, so I completely erased my hairline on the side of my head. I was tweaking. I didn’t know what the fuck we were gonna do. Then we show up to the shoot, and the makeup artist decided to put a little splat of paint there and just rolled with it.”

An accident. A mistake. A visual representation of how they turn discomfort and mistakes into art.

“It evolved into dressing how we feel comfortable and what feels good to us,” they say. “The sound just kind of developed on its own.”

That’s the key to Holywatr. Nothing feels forced. They don’t treat genre like a fence. They let things grow if they want to grow, and they cut things away when it feels good to do so.

Where they stand now feels different. Sharper. More defined. Their next record is finished, and it “feels more Holywatr than Holywatr.”

“It’s all very gothic, very classically inspired,” they explain. “Harmony, melody, cinematic, dark. Kind of Tim Burton. Little Piece of Heaven vibe, but Holywatr.”

I heard one of the tracks on the way to the venue. It feels like the band has distilled something. Not a new identity, but a more realized one.

They didn’t write the album in a straight line. They wrote everything, then listened for what belonged.

“I’m a big proponent of a song having its own identity,” Chandler says. “It wants to be whatever it wants to be. The more you try and make a song something, the more you’re making decisions that aren’t good for that piece of art. If it doesn’t fit a project, that’s okay. We don’t shoehorn it.”

“This one’s more focused,” they say. “We’d write something and go, this is awesome, but it’s not for this project. So we set it aside. Then we wrote again. Eventually we found a collection of songs that were cohesive.”

They all agree on what that created.

“It’s our favorite Holywatr record by far,” the band says.

Part of that clarity comes from the people around them. Daniel, the newest member who couldn’t make it to the interview, feels like he’s always been here.

“Daniel fucking rules,” they say immediately. “He’s super calm, even when he’s mad. The volume of his voice doesn’t change. He’s centered. A godsend on tour. Fun in the studio. He’s a bright kid. We love him.”

There’s another layer to the band too, one that’s harder to talk about without oversimplifying. The religious imagery. The cross. The name itself. It’s not branding. It’s not satire. It’s something closer and more personal.

“Raised Christian,” Ice says. “I wouldn’t say religion directly affects the direction of the band, but we have songs where we’re talking about God and stuff. It definitely affects the passion we put behind it and wanting to do it for a higher purpose. We’re not a Christian band. We have a cross, but we still are for something good and positive. Just art.”

Then Patrick expands.

“When I’m writing lyrics, whether it’s about love, heartbreak, longing, violence, guilt, anything, it’s all a devotional,” he says. “My belief is that we’re not separate from God, whatever you want to call it. Everything I say, everything I do, everything I think is a prayer. I’m interacting with that source.”

He talks about heartbreak with the same spirituality. About trying to keep a relationship alive even when it collapses. About accountability. About the belief that even painful things have meaning.

“Even if something fucked up happens, I still feel like there’s a sliver of, yes this is bad, but we’ll see,” he says. “There are infinite possibilities. So it’s like, thy will be done, whatever that is. The more I connect with that, the happier I am.”

He nods toward the crowd gathering outside.

“We’re headlining our first Salt Lake show,” he says. “All these people came because they connected with something we made. That’s what it’s about. You don’t have to sing the Lord’s praises to honor something higher. Just create it and give it away.”

Holywatr has the same ingredients found in any project that really means something.

They’re driven by something greater than themselves. They’re in a state of constant self discovery. The music they make and the lyrics they write, they really fucking mean it.

It lets their fans really connect. That’s how Pat could point the mic to the crowd that night and let the crowd finish the lyrics. Not just to one song, to damn near all of them.

Their nuanced view of devotion and spirituality couldn’t be covered in a 30 minute interview, and how they embody all of my favorite things can’t be covered in a 1200 word article.

But I believe it’s a true privilege to discover the band at this time in their journey. We’re watching something really, well, real unfold with these guys.

They just wrapped their headlining tour and have already announced their next. They’ll be supporting Chiodos’s 20th anniversary US tour through December. And early next year they’re releasing their next full album.

If you’re not following their journey already, now is the time to pay attention.

Holywatr is inevitable.