UK noise-makers Heriot have been making waves ever since they announced their signing to underground tastemaker label Church Road Records and released their first single with them, ‘Dispirit’. We got in touch with them at the very start of 2022 to talk about their past year, what they envision the band to be, and what the future holds.
“I would maybe say, Heriot is a way for us all to, as friends, get together and voice all of our angst, all of our issues, all of our collected feelings towards things and present them in a way that is heavy, that is raw and that is honest,” vocalist/guitarist Debbie Gough explains when asked to describe who Heriot are and their aim with the band. Their influences are many, spanning hardcore, even ambient and industrial, as Deb is happy to expand on. “I think, obviously there’s bands like Nails. For me, Oathbreaker is definitely a big one. Maybe Knocked Loose and Fuming Mouth too, and industrial elements are a big one for us, even Deftones-y kind of stuff. We don’t talk about that often, but it sometimes comes through!” There’s those obvious Nails comparisons, as well as the raw aggression and riff-craft of Power Trip that “me [Deb] and [vocalist/bassist Jake] Packer always talk about when we’re doing stuff… that old school vibe mixed with abrasiveness and industrial elements.”
Despite this, and as drummer Julian Gage freely admits, everyone being into “a lot of different stuff”, it’s when they come together that it all coalesces into something special. “It’s just a melting pot of lots of stuff! I think together, it’s quite unique. There’s a lot going on even though it’s quite abrasive and noisy, but it’s still different.” Guitarist Erhan Alman agrees, and adds that “there’s never a point we’re all listening to the same band either. I don’t think I ever chat to Julian, Deb or Packer about what they listen to right now, which is weird because we write music together!”
“Heriot is a way for us all to, as friends, get together and voice all of our angst”
Looking back on the frankly incredible year they had in 2021, they’re still clearly as surprised by it as when they first started gathering momentum. “It’s been weird,” Julian begins, “everything we put out until quite recently [single Near Vision/Enter The Flesh] has been in some kind of lockdown or restrictions, there was no live music.” That meant they weren’t able to truly gauge the feedback to their music – people online loved it, but they were anxious about how that would translate to shows when they finally got to play them again. When they did finally step back onto stages (and blew everyone away), he gushes “it felt wicked! We could actually do it, go out and tour, meet people in the flesh. People say nice things, then they actually exist!”
Before lockdown, as Deb relates, “we were a different band… 2019 was different for us in terms of what we were doing… I never used to do vocals, I wasn’t even singing at home!” Her stepping up to the mic has lent a sharpness to their sound, both in her acerbic shrieks and the foreboding melodies in songs like ‘Coalescence’ and ‘Dispirit’. They’re all affable, and disarmingly honest about their worries of returning to the stage as a revamped, reinvigorated outfit. Worries that were proven unfounded, as their signing to Church Road and rapid rise to stars of the British metal underground has shown. “The first Burn It Down [festival] show we played, I was terrified to soundcheck my mic!” Deb exclaims, “you’d hoped that people would expect us to be good, but we were thinking, what if we’re terrible? Packer and I were worrying about being able to play some of the riffs and do vocals over the top,” she continues. All those doubts were soon proved unfounded; it only takes a cursory search of social media after their shows to see people gushing about the experience and the sheer sonic heft the four piece bring to bear.
“I never used to do vocals, I wasn't even singing at home!”
That flood of recognition isn’t going unappreciated; as Julian and Erhan both explain, they might work day jobs, but it’s all for the purpose of pushing Heriot onwards and upwards. They earmarked what each of them were best at, to focus their energy on and it’s brought serious dividends. From support slots with Svalbard and Raging Speedhorn in London at the tail end of 2021, to opening the year supporting Rolo Tomassi and Pupil Slicer, as well as being announced for not only 2000 Trees but Bloodstock (and, at time of writing, now Download Festival too), their star has risen slowly but surely thanks to their efforts and the groundswell of support the scene has given them. Erhan explains that, in fact, they got their start at a festival that’s always been very close to their hearts as fans. “Me, Julian and Jake were first discussing Heriot at Trees in 2014 and we’ve been there every year since!” he says, incredulous that in just a few months’ time they’ll be on their other side of that barrier, playing to the crowd they once sat in.
More of their efforts will come to fruition with the release of their debut EP, Profound Morality, in April this year. “When we wrote these last two songs [Near Vision and Enter The Flesh], Dispirit wasn’t out and we didn’t know how that would go down, but Cleansed Existence went down really well for us. We were like, yeah! Let’s write some ragers!” says Deb of their incredibly well-received singles, the former of which features one of the heaviest breakdowns this side of magnitude 9 earthquakes. “We have all these different elements, we try to draw fro what works with what we have released at the time… Even now, with new music, it’s even clearer what we want to sound like… We’re still refining it a bit.” she says. Erhan continues that it’s something they’re cognisant of, how organic and malleable their songwriting feels. “We don’t feel like we have to stick to something, a formula that works for us. We continue to experiment because… people are kind of expecting to hear something fresh and something new that we haven’t done before.” They’re all of one mind on this, Julian summing it up, “there’s a lot of new sounds on the record that we haven’t put out anything like yet. It’s a cohesive piece from start to finish.”
It’s clear that the Heriot we’re hearing now isn’t the Heriot of a few months ago, nor the Heriot of 12 months from now. It’s the start of something that’ll keep going, of a band that are future-proofing their sound by refusing to stand still. Signing off, Erhan sums up part of their philosophy to the band. “The one thing we can control is what we should stay consistent at. As long as we enjoy it, however long it goes on. If we achieve great things, we achieve great things. Enjoy it for the ride! And if we stop caring? We pack it in.”