Heriot might just be the most exciting young band in the UK right now. The Swindon/Birmingham quartet have been making waves ever since they added guitarist and co-vocalist Debbie Gough to their lineup in 2019, and started creating a metallic blend of ambient, hardcore, thrash and industrial. Metal’s top brass – Lamb Of God, Trivium and Machine Head’s Robb Flynn – love them.
The band released excellent EP Profound Morality in 2022, and following high-profile tour support slots with Lamb Of God, Zeal & Ardor and Svalbard, the hype around them has only increased.
Their long-awaited debut album justifies it. What sets Heriot apart is the vastness and extremities of their sound. Recorded with a dream team – Josh Middleton (Sylosis/ex-Architects) produced, while Sikth’s Justin Hill and Fit For An Autopsy’s Will Putney assumed engineering and mixing duties – Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell sounds like the confident work of a far more experienced band.
At their heaviest, they feel genuinely dangerous. If you had to convey the claustrophobia of Harm Sequence and Siege Lord in an image, it would be a hopeless, filthy chamber where the walls are closing in for a crushing death. Yet there is light amid the bleakness.
Expanding on the melodic experimentation that they’ve only toyed with in the past, here the band have embraced their love for shoegaze and electronica, seamlessly sewing together textures and tones and creating full tracks from surprising influences.
These additions could feel jarring, yet the album never feels disjointed. The spectre of NIN stalks the beat of Lashed, while tracks such as Opaline and Visage, wrapped in clean, shoegazey melodies and dreamy vocals, mark a new frontier for what we should expect from extreme music. Heriot’s future is very bright indeed.
Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell is out September 27 via Century Media. Heriot tour the UK with Sylosis, Fit For An Autopsy and Darkest Hour from November 22 - for the full list of dates visit their official website.
