“Let’s fucking go!” Heriot drummer Julian Gage has jumped to his feet behind his kit, his face contorted with rage and adrenaline. Eyeballing the crowd, he gestures wildly with his arms, orchestrating the mosh. On either side of him, singer/ guitarist Debbie Gough, guitarist Erhan Alman and bassist/ co-vocalist Jake Packer exchange knowing grins, before steamrolling into a hulking riff powerful enough to turn your insides to jelly. Cue chaos.
We’re at Corporation in Sheffield, where Heriot are playing Bastard Fest, the mini-festival curated by Empire State Bastard, aka Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil and Oceansize’s Mike Vennart. It’s everything you’d expect from an event called Bastard Fest. Five of metal’s nastiest, noisiest bands have united for this one-day gig: alongside Heriot there are post black metallers Hidden Mothers, mathcore ragers Pupil Slicer, monolithic miserabilists Conjurer and Empire State Bastard themselves.
It’s a snapshot of just how brightly British metal is burning at the gnarlier end of the spectrum. There’s a particular buzz surrounding Heriot right now. Over the last few years, the quartet have become one of the most talked-about bands in the UK underground.
They formed in 2014, but it was their 2020 single Cleansed Existence that really introduced their oppressive blend of tar-thick hardcore, industrial and death metal. Punctuated by flashes of dreamy melody, Jake Packer’s ferocious roars and Deb’s vocals, which switched from banshee-esque shrieks to swooning cleans in a microsecond, it offered a new perspective of what extreme metal could be.
Their status as one of British metal’s bright young things was sealed with 2022’s Profound Morality EP. When Metal Hammer writers submitted their strictly albums-only end of year lists in 2022, so many of us picked Profound Morality that it had to be included in the final rundown anyway.
Since then, things have moved fast. They’ve toured with Architects, Zeal & Ardor and Rolo Tomassi, and been namechecked by everyone from Machine Head’s Robb Flynn to Trivium’s Matt Heafy. And all this before they’d even recorded an album – their debut, Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell, arrived in September. Backstage pre-show, Heriot admit they have been taken aback by the attention.
“I’m still in awe that people give a shit about the band, to be honest,” says guitarist Erhan. Empire State Bastard’s dressing room is right next door to Heriot’s, and as we settle back on lumpy couches for our interview, we hear all manner of strange noises coming through the walls: manic laughter, loud clangs of metal and what sounds like experimental jazz. A collage of posters plastered on the walls shows all the bands who have played this small Yorkshire venue on their way to greatness over the years, among them Lamb Of God, local heroes Bring Me The Horizon, and Architects.
“We thought it would have taken a bit longer for us to get here,” admits Jake Packer (everybody calls him Packer, so we will too). The bassist is friendly and gently spoken offstage, transforming into a formidable presence onstage, like some sort of extreme metal Gremlin. A fiercely DIY spirit and the mundane reality of real life are keeping the band’s feet firmly on the ground. Last night, Packer was working his second job, flipping vegan burgers at a restaurant until 11pm, while Julian has skipped out on our interview today to man the merch stall.
“We’re quite realistic about how long things should usually take,” says Erhan. “We are like, ‘Should we be doing this now?’ But we are, and we have to give it a shot.”
Heriot was formed in Swindon in 2014 by schoolmates Julian, Erhan and Packer. Initially they were a sludgy trio, with Packer doubling up on vocals. They gained some traction with 2015’s Violence EP and the following year’s World Collapse EP, and an appearance on the New Blood stage at 2016’s Bloodstock, but things only really started to take off when they brought Debbie into the fold in 2019.
A long-time friend who’d been playing filthy riffs as guitarist in Birmingham band Dead Hands, her arrival was the spark they needed. Immediately, her free-flowing and thrashy guitar style, and her love of visceral noise and shoegaze bands, elevated the band’s doomy sound. Growing up in Birmingham as the daughter of metalhead parents, she got her first guitar aged 10.
“Until I went to school, I wasn’t really around other styles of music,” she shrugs, smiling through a cold that’s left her feeling “spaced out”. In 2011, her dad took her to her first Download Festival where they watched Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister and Skunk Anansie, who they listened to together at home.
“It was where I really fell in love with metal,” she says of Download today. “My dad always used to say to me, ‘You’re going to be on that stage one day.’”
He clearly knew what he was on about. In 2022, that prediction came true when Heriot opened Download’s Dogtooth Stage on the Friday morning, playing to a packed tent chanting their name while Deb’s dad watched proudly from the sidelines.
“It was so nice to have that 360°-moment shared again,” she smiles. “Obviously, I’ve gone off to do my own music and find bands that I love, but without my parents’ influence, for sure, I wouldn’t have.”
Further completing the circle that began with getting her first instrument as a 10- year-old kid, she recently became one of the faces of Jackson Guitars’ Virtuoso campaign, alongside ex-Megadeth man Marty Friedman and Periphery’s Misha Mansoor, something she describes as “one of the best experiences of my life”.
While the band unanimously proclaim Julian, who organises many of the day-today logistics, as their “natural leader”, Deb is emerging as the band’s face and undisputed star. Onstage, it’s impossible to take your eyes off her as she segues seamlessly between shrieks, clean vocals and fiery riffing, all executed with effortless cool. In conversation, she gives off an air of quiet determination.
“Growing up, I never really thought about anything else other than music,” she says. “I couldn’t envision doing anything else.”
A self-confessed guitar obsessive, who until recently worked in a guitar shop, she never wanted to be a singer, but as the band began to experiment with more and more melody, she stepped up to the plate, reluctantly at first. Prior to Heriot’s 2022 single, Coalescence, she had never even attempted clean vocals. Initially, she found the process of singing mortifying, insisting she record clean vocals alone in the studio, or with only Packer present.
“We dipped our toe into melody and it ended up being such a big talking point for our band,” she says. “I’ll be totally truthful, I don’t feel confident with clean singing, I’m just aware now that I’m known as a singer, or it’s expected of me to be one.”
“She’s a powerhouse,” Erhan cuts in. “We’ve got to a good place where we push each other. I know I do it with Deb a lot because I know her ability, and I think I can push her out of her shell a little bit more.”
She credits artists such as Billie Eilish and R’n’B singer Banks for helping develop her singing style. “I’ve played guitar for so long and I’m so comfortable with that, it’s a strange position to be starting something new and to be thrown so far into the deep end with it. [Singing] is an instrument that I haven’t been playing for very long.”
Is she comfortable in the spotlight now? “I’m a lot better than I was,” she considers. “Not that I was ever outwardly very nervous, I tried to keep that as internal as I could. I do feel as though I’m more prepared for this now.”
It helps that British metal is more diverse, vibrant and exciting now than ever before. “I can say that circumstances where I feel patronised or there’s clear sexism happening are much more rare than what they were when I was 18 or 19.”
She points to Bastard Fest as an example, and the mixed gender line-ups of Heriot, Pupil Slicer and Empire State Bastard, who feature bassist Naomi Macleod.
“Seven or eight years ago, it would have been a jaw-on-the-floor moment to play with such a varied line-up. Now, there don’t seem to be as many instances where I’m concerned about perhaps being the odd one out. When I was younger, I was always concerned about being the odd one out and being able to hold my own.”
Her growing confidence is palpable on Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell. Produced by Sylosis guitarist Josh Middleton, it was the first time the band recorded in a professional studio rather than laying down tracks in Packer’s living room. A work of extremes, it’s head-crushingly heavy while also committing fully to the melodic experimentation that litters Heriot’s past material. It’s influenced as much by Deb’s beloved shoegaze and Packer’s love of experimental electronica as it is by hardcore, thrash and industrial.
“We’ve always said heavy doesn’t have to start with guitars,” Debbie says. “I don’t think that we’ve attached ourselves to one subgenre of metal. Heavy can be distorted electronics, deep bass… loads of different things.”
Heriot returned to Download this year, making the leap from the Dogtooth Stage to opening the Second Stage. Disappointingly, the technical difficulties that plagued so many bands over the weekend meant their set was cut short. “We spent months of rehearsing, getting ready for it, upgrading all our rig, getting it all just the best we could possibly be,” sighs Packer. “I think we smashed it for what we could, though.”
Today, the band faced a similar test. When Hammer arrived at Bastard Fest mid-afternoon in time to see Heriot begin their soundcheck, it was immediately clear there were problems with the band’s in-ear monitors. After some lengthy back and forth with the mixing desk, worried glances and profuse apologies, the band’s soundcheck overran by an hour, causing the venue’s doors to open 40 minutes late.
Later in the dressing room, they admit they won’t know if the issue is fixed until they actually get onstage tonight. Although they’re a lot more comfortable these days when it comes to rolling with the punches. “We’re more accustomed to how things run,” says Debbie. “We’re just becoming a more experienced band.”
That assurance is palpable when Heriot take the stage for their set, with Empire State Bastard’s Simon Neil, inconspicuous with a black baseball cap pulled down almost over his eyes, watching from the sidelines. Exploding in a tsunami of charcoal-black riffs, there’s little evidence of the day’s earlier technical problems. Cool, comfortable and slick, they look like a band who have been doing this for decades, not a rising band on the verge of releasing their debut.
Despite their ambient, softer touches, there’s no getting around the fact that Heriot are unfathomably heavy. Not for the first time today, we marvel that a band this brutal stand a chance of making it out of metal’s underground.
“Heriot present a fresh alternative to today’s homogenous electronic whinge-metal, ushering in a much welcome grinding intensity to the UK scene,” Empire State Bastard’s Mike Vennart tells us a few days after Bastard Fest. “I sincerely hope Debbie inspires an entire generation of women to pick up guitars and scream their fucking heads off.”
In the dressing room at Bastard Fest, the band are certainly up for the challenge of representing the new wave of British metal. “We want to keep pushing boundaries on what we think heavy could be,” says Erhan. “As long as we don’t create something for the sake of other people, that’s what matters most.”
“I still don’t feel like this is our job,” adds Debbie. “We still have so many more things to tick off the bucket list. There’s still so much for us to do, and it’s still so fresh and exciting.”
Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell is out now via Century Media