Heal the Hurt burst onto the scene in 2025 with their self-titled EP release as well as their collaboration with Holy Name on “Stained Glass.” Excitement was just the beginning of my reaction to the announcement that they were playing Uprise. I remember hearing about Trevor’s experience with anxiety on the KingdomCore podcast. They incorporate their personal experiences into the music and uses their platform as a way to discuss mental health. We got a chance to catch up with Trevor and the guys in Heal the Hurt as we discussed their writing process, talking about mental health and their involvement with the first ever KingdomCore Tour in the fall.
Heal The Hurt is:
Trevor Tyson: Lead Vocals
Alec Gregory: Bass and Clean Vocals
Brandon Marlowe: Guitar
Kevin Schmitz: Drums
Kyle Calise: Guitar
Kevin & Brandon were not present for this interview.
Solid Rock Unplugged: Tell me a little bit about how Heal The Hurt started.
Trevor: I went through a very tough season of burnout and depression. My main issue was feeling like I had to be doing something for somebody at any given time. My worth was in what I could do for someone. I ended up in the ER from burnout and it was just a huge wake-up call for me. Struggling with your mental health and anxiety and stuff has been a constant battle in my life. After that pivotal moment in the hospital, I was forced to take two weeks off work. I’d never had a vision to have a band or anything and that just kind of happened, the name and everything. The really crazy thing is after I felt like I had the name, I went and listened to the song “Awakening” by Amanda Cook and it says “a ray of light to heal the hurt,” and it was just kind of confirmation. I was like “all right, I got to do this.” So I hit up a few friends to see if they’d be willing to help produce and stuff. I got to working with them and then I saw a video of Alec on Instagram doing covers of Fit For A King and other bands and was like “Dang! That dude’s voice is crazy!” So we got to talking.
Alec: I’ll mention one thing that’s kind of funny. I don’t have social media anymore, but at the time I did. When he saw one of my videos, he direct messaged me, was like, “Hey, I have a proposition for you. Can we exchange phone numbers?” and I said “No, you can tell me what you’re wanting to do first before I give you my phone number, until I know what’s going on.” He’s like, “Okay. Well, can we FaceTime over Instagram?” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s perfectly fine.” So that’s where the conversation started. He’s like, “I have this vision for being in a metal band and I want you to be the clean vocalist.” I was like, “Okay, I’m in.” He’s like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yeah!” “But you got to learn how to play bass!”
Yeah, that was one part that wasn’t initially talked about, then he reached out to me after a few months of us starting to work together on songs. He reached out and was like “What do you think about playing bass?” I had been a huge fan of Polaris, Wolves At The Gate, and a bunch of bands like The Amity Affliction, seeing clean vocalists with guitars, playing primarily bass and I was like “Oh, I’m 100% down for this.” I’ve never played bass in my life up until this point. My whole family’s been musically inclined, but I was like “I don’t know how to play bass, but I will learn it!”
Trevor: It’s a pretty outrageous request when you think about it, “Hey, learn an instrument!” Like, if someone came to me with that proposition, I’d have been like “Nah, I’m good!” So that’s how Alec ended up in the band and we worked with producers to get the first EP done. Fast forward to booking our first tour and I needed a live member, so I hit up Brandon Marlowe who had a project called Spirit Walker. His other band, Fighting Regress, had a drummer named Kevin. He had an in-ear rig and was ready to go, so we had our live unit. The first time we all met in person, other than he and I, was at our first practice.
Then last year, Brandon was having a baby and we needed a fill-in guitar player. Kyle was in a band called No Treaty and I got to work with him on the marketing side of things for strategy and all that fun stuff. We had already connected and worked really well together. I was content being a four-piece, but he was available and I asked and he was down to give it a go. We haven’t even officially announced him yet, because we’re waiting to get press shots to do that. So if you’re reading this, you know things that aren’t public yet! Which, people could put two and two together because you’re at shows and stuff, but I like to do things in different episodes, I guess? You think of your brand as a sitcom. It’s like New Music, New Music, New Guitar Player—Kyle!
Alec: He’s also unofficially been announced because our headlining bill with all of our dates and everything has been public for a few months. But he’s in that and he’s actually photoshopped in that. So we took a picture of Kyle and an old press shot that we had and we had Jareb and Josh Bramlett from The Protest, their business Quiet Strength, help us out with that. I think people are starting to catch on to that, but it’s an unofficial official introduction to him being in the band.
Trevor: It honestly was the most natural process, there was no training to be done. There was nothing. We’d already been playing shows together and such. The first tour together with all of us was just incredible. It was a good fit. I can’t see us not being a five-piece now. There’s some tours where either him or Brandon won’t be able to go, with real work and stuff, but for the most part being a five-piece unit has been incredible. It’s kind of like a marriage, to a certain extent, but we don’t really have disagreements or anything like that. Everybody kind of knows their role and what they bring to the table and you just have to be willing to be wrong and work hard, because being a metalcore band in particular, in the faith-based spectrum is tough. There’s not a lot of money in it. So we’re all making sacrifices. I self-fund all of the music videos and everything. There’s no label behind it. It’s a very unique situation to be in to be able to come to festivals like this and do our first headline tour, in what, 28 cities? The first leg with Magdalene Rose and Unbroken Reign on the East Coast and then the second leg that just went on sale today is Cultist and Small Voice on the West Coast. It’s just been wild, like I would say the last 24 months. God just continues to blow our minds, because nobody’s worthy to do anything. You can be ambitious, but nobody could expect anything like that.
Solid Rock Unplugged: Yeah, you’re doing the first-ever KingdomCore tour. My wife and I are planning on going to the Reading, PA show. How did that tour come about?
Trevor: Sean and I are business partners to a certain extent and we want to do a KingdomCore Fest, so it’s like “How do we get KingdomCore into the live event space to prove the concept?” Where we can get the funding from a promoter, essentially to do the festival that we would like to do and it’s a work in progress. We had the idea for KingdomCore Presents, like Sean’s always wanted to get into it. But last year in particular, there were three separate times where he was like “I want to do a festival, I want to do a festival, I want to do a festival!” He was getting these DMs from people and I’m like, “No, that dude seems shady.” I don’t know these people, but you have to do it right. I’ve been in the live event space before I was in music. I’ve done every role, it has to be done right or it’s a failure. You have to be willing to lose money the first three years at least, so it was like “No, no, no, no.”
We were booking a headline tour and we had offered KingdomCore Presents to other bands but they declined because they weren’t getting paid to do it. So we made our first headline for KingdomCore Presents to try to unite that audience together and provide something that they can all go and meet at, just provide a space for people to come and hear good music that they can relate to and messages that can encourage them. I want to see KingdomCore Fest happen if this tour is successful. We have really good proof of concept to make that happen, so it’s been so cool and Sean’s a great friend. We FaceTime for hours a day. He’s just been awesome and I love that dude.
Solid Rock Unplugged: So Magdalene Rose and Unbroken Reign, why those two bands?
Trevor: We played with Magdalene Rose in Germany. When I tell you she mopped the floor, that girl goes off! I hear all these stories about bands that take people that aren’t as “good” as them on tour and I’m like, “Let’s get people that are going to give us a run for our money every single night!” Go watch Magdalene Rose and I guarantee there’s going to be people who leave and be like, “Man, she stole the show!” and I’m cool with that! If they had a good experience, that’s awesome. She was awesome. Unbroken Reign opened for the Wolves At The Gate, Convictions, and HTH show in Dallas last year. They were incredible and they’re all either still in high school or just out of high school.
Solid Rock Unplugged: I was going to say, how are they making that work?
Trevor: They’re gonna make it happen! I don’t know if all of them will be able to do it, but they’re making it work.
Solid Rock Unplugged: Let’s get back to new music. Last week your new single, “Critical Error,” came out. What was the writing process for that song and all the new music that’s coming out after that?
Trevor: I always start with the lyrics, what do I want to say? And map it out. Then you have ideas for different lines and cadences and stuff. It’s pretty much just a bunch of notes. You’re like, “Three weeks ago I wrote something that might be cool for this,” and then you try to merge them together. In our case, musically, we’ve worked with a good bit of producers that we love. Ryan Leitru who was in For Today and is now in Fit For A King, Hunter Babcock who did some work for Holy Name and now Aaron Chaparian is mixing and mastering. We found our unit, right? So the EP was a collection of songs and trying to figure out what the heck we’re doing, now it feels like we found our sound. We all work remote on music, we’re never in the same room writing anything, so it’s a very unorthodox way to do it, but it works for us. Alec probably has some insight on lyrics too.
Alec: Initially how we started on the EP, the first song we ever worked on was “Where Our Hearts Divide.” That was kind of my trial with Heal The Hurt. I sent the demo to Trevor and he was like, “Yeah, you sold me. That’s it.” “Where Our Hearts Divide” was recorded in my bedroom of my parents’ house, back in the day. I had just graduated college and moved back into my parents’ house for a few months before I got married. I was just wanting to save money and everything like that. I had a little makeshift studio in my room.
Fast forward to our new music. What’s funny is “Critical Error” was probably the longest song on our new record to finalize. It was one of the first that we started working on and it took until May or June for us to be like “Okay, yeah.” We did pre-pro with Ryan Leitru on August 1st. Ryan is an absolute gem of a human being and he is a mastermind of writing music and everything involving any part of what sound we’re wanting to merge together. Usually, how the songwriting process goes is Trevor starts with the lyrics, then he gets an instrumental working. Once he gets that, he sends the lyrics and instrumentals over to me. I give my two cents on what’s going on. From there I send it back to Trevor, then we have everybody else incorporate their own ideas and stuff like that. From there, we have a pre-pro call with Ryan Leitru, who is now with Fit For A King and then we go back to the drawing board with any insight that he’s given us and from there it just kind of sums up the songs as a whole.
Trevor: Kyle, what’s the writing process for Heal The Hurt that you’ve noticed from being in the band for such a short period of time?
Kyle: One of the cool things I’ve gotten to see is how these songs have all entered the pipeline. I remember when they were working on “Critical” and seeing that one go all the way, and all these new ones. I get excited when I see a new mix come in. I’m always listening to it. What’s really cool is we’re always writing something. Trevor always has a bunch of lyrics. Brandon has a lot of guitar stuff. I have a lot of guitar stuff. We just have this folder of “Here’s a bunch of ideas!” A lot of it, we haven’t touched yet. So I’m really excited about that, but just seeing what this immediate new album is coming out. It’s been really cool to see it from the inside, but also from the outside, like “Oh, new song… oh, I get to play it! This is really sweet!” I have my favorites and stuff. I get to play it in the band, but also get to enjoy it as a fan too.
Solid Rock Unplugged: Your first record, you made a very clear effort to talk about mental health. Why do you feel it’s so important to talk about mental health in your music?
Trevor: Because I know what it's like to need to hear it. I’ve had to go through it and I know what Memphis May Fire’s Unconditional album meant to me and how it made me feel seen and heard and understood. Point blank, that’s it. Not every song forever is going to be about that, but a good portion of it is, because I mean, that’s over a decade of my life battling that.
Alec: I think for me, it really resonates with me because I’ve also struggled with mental health. Through probably the first half of my college days, when you’re a college kid you’re going to parties, you’re doing a lot of stuff like that and I was just not in a good environment, not a good crowd. There’s an old saying I’ve heard several pastors say in the past, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” I quickly realized what that had been doing, not only to my mental health, but my relationships with my family, outside of my marriage, and all those kinds of things.
Mental health is one thing that I’ve really focused on more than in the past. One thing that’s helped me in particular is a song called “Flickering Flame” by Wolves At The Gate. The song isn’t necessarily towards the mental health side, but the lyrics are “Stay with me, my flickering flame. Stay with me, I know your name. Quit your fight, it’s all in vain. When your flame takes flight, it’ll last the pouring rain.” So it’s kind of a person who’s sitting and just wondering why their flame for God is so insignificant, but it’s not out. They’re still longing for it to be this huge inferno, but it’s not and they’re wondering why. They’re kind of questioning themselves, they’re questioning who they are as a person. That song really resonated with me to venture out and actually think about doing music.
for the majority of my life, played through college. Music was something I never thought was in the cards for me. But my whole family was musically inclined. Everybody does music and they have done it my entire upbringing. That was something I pushed off from God and that song, “Flickering Flame,” gave me this perspective. I’m like, “Why am I not seeing doors open? I feel like this is what God’s calling me to do.” But the calling that you have on your life never changes. Your calling is to spread the name and the gospel of Jesus, it’s not something that you choose. What you choose is kind of coinciding with God’s flame for your life, on how you spread the message of Jesus. That’s something that I learned a little later, I mean, I’m not old. But I’m learning that more and more as I go. Writing about mental health and writing about specific messages that may or may not tie to that is something that I have found personal as well.
Trevor: Kyle, are you going to tell the story of “Deep” by No Treaty? That relates to this and you wrote it.
Kyle: Yeah, so there's a song that I wrote for No Treaty and it was the only song that I wrote the lyrics for, all the way. It was basically coming out of the 2019, 2020 era. I know for me I have always had a journey where I’m “start, stop, start, stop” with the Lord. I wish I was further and a lot of times I just feel so in the deep. My wife had just joined the Coast Guard in that time period, so my mind was just around the ocean. Everything just kind of developed around that, but right before she joined, one of the things that I always struggled with was lust. There was a time where my wife caught me looking at stuff and it was really awful. Really awful for our marriage. Really awful for me as a husband, thinking about it brought me way, way far away from the Lord.
So going into this new season with that, the Coast Guard was something that I really, really wanted to do and I couldn’t do it. I tried six times to get in, because of kidney stones. So my wife, she went in and it was this feeling, I felt jealous but I wasn’t jealous of her. I just wanted to do it too. I also couldn’t really find my place. I felt like I was wading in the deep, so my prayer became in my little Notes app on my phone, like “Holy Spirit, fill me with peace. I’m wading lifeless in the deep, save me.” Kind of just jotted down how it made me feel in the deepest part of it and incorporated it into the season of life I was in, Coast Guard, ocean. When I wrote that, that kind of became my prayer. So when No Treaty started as a band, that was the first thing that I shared with the vocalist and it became what we sprung everything off of.
To touch on what these guys are saying, mental health is really big to me too. I’ve struggled with my own battles, watched my wife spiral downwards in a big fashion over the years. It’s something that as my old band was transitioning and when Trevor asked me to be a part of it, it’s like “I want to be a part of what you’re doing. It means a lot to me.” Ministry is important. Yes, we’re sharing the love of Christ. There is a place for the band that is just ministry focused. But just because not necessarily everything is so forward facing ministry doesn’t mean that it’s not any less. It doesn’t carry any less weight. The people right in this are very grounded in the Lord. It’s the pinnacle and the pillar of everything that we do. It just so happens that mental health is something that’s really big. I think it’s something that gets overlooked a lot of times in the Christian world, or something that’s kind of like “We don’t talk about that,” or try to cover it. No man, this is real. We’re real Christian people. We love Jesus and we struggle hard.
Solid Rock Unplugged: Thank you guys for sharing that. I’ve had my own battles with mental health. I love partnering with bands who champion that cause. Fortunately, I think where the church was twenty years ago and where it is now, we’re going in a better direction. We can always do more. We can always improve. But it’s good to hear a band, doesn’t matter the genre, say “Hey, we’re going to speak up because everybody’s going through something. Everybody’s going through anxiety, depression, panic. They’re all going through something.”
Solid Rock Unplugged: To end on a high note, what have been some cool ways that you’ve seen God use Heal The Hurt?
Trevor: The opportunities we’ve gotten to play live, even in the last eight months, insane. We got to go to Germany last year on our first year of touring, not even, it was legitimately seven months in. And then being able to play with Flyleaf and Sleeping Giant, insane. You dream about that stuff, but it rarely happens. For that, I’m grateful. But I think for me, you find yourself in different environments, different states, different people. Just festivals like this, we had such a good time playing today. It was so hot and it was our first time playing in the sun, ever. It was like we were in an oven, still doing our thing. During the last two songs, me and Alec over here, we’re seeing stars, like legitimately about to see black, and I’m just like “Okay, but I need to jump right here. So I’m just going to keep going. If I pass out, I pass out, whatever.” But yeah, the opportunity to travel and share this message, insane.
Alec: I think with me in particular, it kind of goes back to what I was saying about how I played baseball for so many years of my life. I pushed off music for what felt like two decades. I’m not far off thirty, so for the majority of my life I have always neglected what God had naturally gifted me with. I always knew that I could sing, but I didn’t know how I could sing. I started learning how to scream when I was thirteen, in the shower or when my parents weren’t around, because I was listening to Skillet, I was listening to Wolves At The Gate, I was listening to Impending Doom, a lot of these different Christian metal bands. Once I finally said yes to God and said yes to him using me through music, it was insane. Similar to what Trevor was saying, it was insane the amount of doors that just opened and I never expected it. My wife and I were very diligent in knowing what we were getting ourselves into when it comes to music. It’s not a very easy career to make money. In the first few years, like Trevor was saying earlier, it’s not a living wage and even more so that same realm in the metal industry, whether that’s Christian or secular, it doesn’t matter. It’s very difficult to get to where you can sustain your family.
But the amount of doors that have opened, that God has just flung wide open, has really shown me what Heal The Hurt can do for people. We get people up to our merch table every night that we have a show, whatever time we play, we get a long line of people coming and just pouring their heart out. In some ways, you can view it as a little bit awkward, because you’re like “I don’t know this person. I don’t know your background.” But you don’t have to. You don’t have to know exactly what they’re going through. Heal The Hurt as a whole has made a forum for people to come in and express their hurt, their emotions, and feel comfortable.
Fortunately for us, we’ve been able to, with the help of God, create a space for people to feel comfortable with an absolute stranger, to go up to them face to face and tell them what they’re struggling with and all these different things. That is a very, very big leap for someone to do. I know that from personal experience. I’ve gone through therapy. Similar to what Kyle was saying, I’ve gone through lust. I’ve done a lot of different things in my life that I really, really regret and things that I can’t change. But the grace of God surpasses all of that stuff. Seeing God breathe on this project of Heal The Hurt and see the impact that it’s had on people. It’s kind of difficult to answer specific things when that question comes up, but it doesn’t discredit anything that we’ve seen thus far.
Kyle: It’s been really cool in just shy of a year that I've been playing shows with Heal The Hurt. For me personally, I’m always like the guy that doesn’t really talk that much. I’m pretty shy. So in all the bands that I’ve always been in, I’ve kind of stayed away from the merch table. I’ll talk to people when they come up to me and stuff like that. But one of the biggest things that I wanted to do differently this time around is be intentional. Because like Alec said, our calling ultimately is to spread the gospel. Music is just a vessel that we do it.
So I wanted to be more intentional about not only enjoying the shows and everything like that, but really being able to connect with people. So just in that short time, being able to see people come up to us. Sometimes Trevor would share his testimony, so like “Hey, this meant so much to me. I’m going through this, this, this, this. And I thought about all these things and this hit me in a season that I really needed” or just straight sharing their heart on a lot of things. Meanwhile, right before we walk to the merch table, I’m bummed that I missed this note or I did this and it ruined my whole night. Then I get to the table and you hear that and it’s like none of that matters. This is why we’re here.
It’s cool that one, people feel comfortable sharing that with us. And two, just to be able to converse with people about it. Also for me personally, just being the new guy, becoming brothers with all these guys has been really huge for me. Especially coming out of a season, my past season that I’ve been going through. Everybody is going through life together. Nobody’s scared of getting in each other’s lives and I think that’s huge. It just feels like a brotherhood. So I’m really, really stoked to be here. Me even being here, to me, is God also because I didn’t plan this at all. But I’m here and I’m stoked.
Trevor: Even from when the project got started, I had some really bad habits. Using things to cope with anxiety that aren’t healthy for you. Being able to be free of that is huge. I hope that others can find freedom in that.
Alec: I do want to interject with what Trevor is mentioning, because it is something that kind of connects both what Kyle is saying and what Trevor is saying as well. When Trevor was in that season, I knew him pretty well, but we were just starting to get to know each other, knowing who we were as people and doing what we stood for, all these kinds of things. He was not fun to be around. He came and visited the apartment that my wife and I were staying in at the time. I told him, “Dude, you got to fix your stuff. You gotta fix this. You’re miserable to be around. I don’t want that for you and I’m telling you this as a friend, because I want you to be more than a friend. I want you to be a brother to me.”
Through this project, similar to what Kyle was saying, the brotherhood that we have built has opened a forum within the actual project for all of us to be open with each other and tell each other what we’re actually struggling with and all the different issues that are going on in life. We’re all there for each other. So seeing Trevor come out of that has been one of the biggest blessings or one of the biggest prayers that I’ve prayed to God is “I want this dude to be free of this stuff.” Sure enough, God used his life and kind of opened doors and set him straight in a way. I think it also takes a little bit of the person itself to kind of acknowledge that. That’s something that I’ve been truly blown away by and couldn’t be more thankful that that has happened.
Trevor: Yeah, using marijuana and things to numb the pain in your life, it’s only masking it. In my experience, it feeds the depression. Everybody’s different, but for me, being able to break out of that was a huge blessing. We meet addicts at every show. I hear and see, and a lot of times you can see people that are on hard drugs have physical markings and stuff on their bodies. They’re relating with a message and it’s not really about that. There is an angle of unhealthy coping that feeds into whatever depression, anxiety that you’re going through. Therapy is expensive. A lot of people are hurting and broken right now. Finances are crap for everybody in this country. It’s not irreparable. We’re not dead. We’re not alone. We can thrive. God is good. We’ve just got to put our best foot forward and choose to be the best version of ourselves that we can.
Solid Rock Unplugged: Thank you for giving up time and sharing your heart. Congrats on the new single, the headlining tour this fall. I’m really excited to see how that goes. Who knows, maybe next year we’ll be at KingdomCore Fest.
Trevor: Dude, that’d be sick! That would be sick.
Solid Rock Unplugged: Is there anything you want to share with the fans?
Trevor: Be ready for new music. We’ve got a lot of it and we’ve got a lot more coming up.
Solid Rock Unplugged: Will it be a full-length or another EP?
Trevor: Yes is the correct answer, because there’s endless possibilities. We’ll be in interviews and we’ll drop what it is and it just goes over people’s heads. We’ve been working hard and people were like “Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?” Every single word has to be intentional or it ain’t coming out. So the track’s got to be stellar but the lyrics to me are the meat and potatoes of the whole thing. ‘Cause if it doesn’t mean anything then what are we doing? I’d rather be snuggling my dog in my bed at home, watching stupid TV. The message has been embedded in it. Naming the band Heal The Hurt kind of made it to where we can’t make party music and stuff. Even if we wanted to, it just wouldn’t make sense. I’d be like “That name doesn’t match, what are they healing?” It’s like, “No, you’re just hurting yourself.” So praise God! The answer is yes.
