Having confirmed themselves as one of the most exciting British metal bands of their generation with last year’s exquisite debut album, Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell, the hype around Heriot shows no signs of abating. With a headline UK tour due to kick off this month, we sat down with frontwoman Debbie Gough for a quick catch-up to chat being BFFs with Slipknot, guitar shop toilet disasters and more.
Heriot have certainly had a wild few years. What’s the most starstruck you’ve been?
“We watched Slipknot side-stage at Graspop. It was such a weird scenario, because we were getting ready to leave the festival, and suddenly I got a message from V-Man [bassist Alessandro Venturella], saying, ‘I’ve got passes for you and your camp if you want to watch us.’ They gave us a tour of the stage and introduced us to everybody. That felt so crazy!”
Slipknot are fans, then?
“Well, V-Man is. Ha ha ha! I’m not sure about the others.”
What’s the worst show you’ve ever played?
“We did one where everything seemed to go wrong. I started screaming and the front row was shouting at me, ‘Your mic’s not on!’ We had to restart, then my guitar strap broke. For whatever reason I didn’t have my spare guitar onstage. There was a door side-stage to get to your gear, and it was locked. I had to do the foot-on-the-monitor thing and hold my guitar up the entire show. It was miserable!”
We’ve seen a lot of people wearing Heriot shirts at gigs in the UK. But have you ever seen someone wearing your merch in an unexpected place?
“I did see someone in a pub in London in a Heriot cap, but I was really weird about it. Ha ha! I didn’t want to do that thing of, ‘Hey, nice cap!’, so I kind of went the other way because I was like, ‘I don’t know what to say!’ Then I felt really bad about it! But I’m sure they weren’t bothered at all. I just thought, ‘I don’t want this person to feel like they have to talk to me.’”
Your guitarist, Erhan Alman, once said Heriot don’t have any metal on their songwriting playlist. Is that true?
“He might not! For Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell, I had a playlist of Nails, Oathbreaker, Power Trip, Billie Eilish, Wand, Sophie and Labrinth.”
In 2023 you did a Jackson Guitars advert with Marty Friedman, Misha Mansoor, Dave Davidson and the like. Did you learn anything playing alongside those master guitarists?
“It was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever been a part of. Marty Friedman, zero ego. He just wanted to talk about, like, ‘Who are your favourite guitarists? What are you listening to?’ And he has such an insane right-hand picking technique! His guitar didn’t have a tremolo arm on, but he didn’t need one! He just bent the strings like that himself. That was crazy.”
You used to work in a guitar shop in Birmingham. Any fun stories from your time there?
“Somebody did a very, very violent shit up our window one day. It was the most explosive diarrhoea you’ve ever seen in your entire life! Ha ha ha! And there were bracelets in the pile of poo. It was like cow shit, or the mud at Download last year.”
Bracelets?!
I presume somebody must have had them on their wrist and then, in their distress of having to shit at the window, probably threw their arms down.”
So you didn’t actually see this happen?
“This is the next bit of the story! I logged into the CCTV and I went through the entire day and the entire night before, and I couldn’t see anything! I spent so long trying to find the culprit and I could not find him!”
Who cleaned it, in the end?
“My workmate did. He got the bleach bucket out and did it himself. What’s funny is my boyfriend works for a drum company, so he knew our shop really well. Before he started working there, he wouldn’t believe me when I’d come home and tell stories like this. Then, when he started dealing with our shop, he was like, ‘Oh my god…’ Ha ha ha!”
We were so hoping you were going to say this is how you met. That would have tied this all together in such a lovely bow.
“I’m afraid not. Ha ha ha!”
Heriot’s UK tour kicks off this month. Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell is out now via Century Media. They also play Bloodstock and 2000 Trees festivals this month