Debbie Gough, guitarist and co-vocalist of UK metal band Heriot, is someone I’ve known for a while. We lived in the same part of Birmingham, England before my move to Montreal and frequented many of the same shows around the city. So it’s been a joy to watch her journey as a musician with a band who are redefining the world of heavy music.
In recent years, Heriot has supported some of the heaviest names in the business and played at some of the most high-profile festivals, from Download to Wacken Open Air. These days, things are a whirlwind, but Gough remains humble, describing the band’s journey as “amazing, grateful, you know, things we could never have predicted that things would go the way that they have for us. And we’re so delighted with that. You know, we’ve had the best few years…fingers crossed that continues.”
For Heriot, sharing a stage with Lamb of God was an impossible dream—until it wasn’t. “Yeah, dreams are coming true,” Gough laughs, recalling their goal to one day open for the band. “The best thing in the world ever.” Heriot’s own brand of heavy music found its place there, and the experience validated the band’s sense of direction and the choices they’ve made.
Heriot’s debut album, Devoured by the Mouth of Hell, marks a natural progression from the EPs and singles they’ve released so far, each one offering a tantalizing taste of the band’s capability. Why now, I ask, for a full-length album?
“I think with when we were writing the EP…we wanted to make sure that we weren’t going to rush into anything too soon. We did discuss doing an album as our first body of work. But I’m really glad that it was an EP that came first because now we’re in a position where we’ve toured on a different level to what we were doing before.”
The album’s sound, she believes, is “a more accurate depiction of who we are now as a band.” There’s a maturity to it, a cohesion, she explains, adding, “I think our sound is much more streamlined and it’s far…it’s far more on the nose of what we wanted to sound like as a band. So now I felt like a good time to get all of that into a record.”
The writing process began back in late 2022, though it took until early 2023 for the ideas to solidify. “We went on tour, had a really busy festival season, came back and kind of reflected on what we’d written and then thought, this can stay, this can go.” When the recording phase finally came, Gough admits they were still fine-tuning up until the final days.
The album’s first track, “Foul Void,” serves as the perfect introduction. “When we wrote Foul Void, we thought that that would be a good opener…the intro to that is stronger, we feel,” Gough explains. The entire album, she notes, has a carefully considered flow, though putting it all together was a balancing act. “To be honest, right up until the final days of handing the album in, we were revising and going back and, you know, as you do.”
Describing Heriot’s sound isn’t easy, and Gough acknowledges the challenge, particularly in a genre where labels can feel limiting. “I would maybe lean into saying heavy is a mood rather than just a tone or aggression. I think we’re trying to steer more into heavy being a feeling and an overwhelming feeling. And that’s something that we’re trying to portray more with the atmospheric kind of tracks, industrial tracks, the more cleanly sung tracks,” she says. The album is meant to feel “heavy” not just in sound but in emotional weight.
From start to finish, the intention is “just to create the intention of heavy, overwhelmingness and bleakness, but just in different methods of portraying that.” Heriot’s mission isn’t about making people feel good. Gough laughs as she tells me, “Yeah, it’s a feel-bad album.”
Achieving that sound was almost as much about production as it was about composition. Heriot worked with Will Putney, renowned for his work with bands like Fit For An Autopsy and END. For Gough, Putney was the perfect choice. “I’ve worked with Will before on one of END’s songs, Thaw, and that was really one process of, you know, bouncing ideas off. He was great with just letting me do what I wanted to and then being like, yeah, do more of this.”
When the first mixes came back, she says, “it felt like the best we’d ever sounded, even from the early mixes.” Gough emphasizes the importance of sound in creating the desired atmosphere, noting, “I think production makes such a huge difference to a record.” With Putney’s guidance, Heriot has pushed their sound further than ever before, blending a layered heaviness with their unique atmospheric elements.
Gough’s vocal work on the album marks a new chapter for her as an artist. “Being a singer was never really my intention as a musician,” she says, “Over the last 12 months, I think I’ve grown to know a little bit more about how I want to sound as a vocalist.”
While the confidence is new, the sound is unmistakable. Alongside Jake Packer, Gough’s vocals add another dimension to Heriot’s heavy sound, a duality that’s unusual in heavy music. “It works really well. It just adds another layer to the sound,” she says. For Gough, the result is something that helps Heriot stand out.
Despite their clear sense of direction, Heriot still resists easy classification, which Gough views with mixed emotions. “Sometimes I think, oh, yeah, you know, where do we belong? But, you know, what will be will be,” she reflects. “I think it’s easier to just put us under the umbrella of metal than it is to go deep into the sub-genres sometimes.”
The band’s unique place within metal—“dirty metal,” as Gough laughingly calls it—has earned them a diverse fanbase and high praise from critics.
With a European tour with Fit For An Autopsy scheduled for later this year, Heriot’s goals stretch beyond UK and European shores. North America, particularly Canada, is high on Gough’s list of places she wants to tour. “I would love to have gone out to the US. I would love to do a US tour and with some Canada shows…I’m half Canadian, so I definitely want to do Canada,” she tells me, revealing a personal connection to the country. “My dad’s from Toronto…I’ve even got a Canadian passport.”
North America remains one of Heriot’s collective goals, and it’s something they’re determined to make happen within the next year or so. “I think that’s collectively our next big goal is to do that at some point over the next 12 months or 18 months.”
With their ambition, humility, and unique sound, Heriot is a band on the rise, capturing the hearts of heavy music fans across the globe. And if Gough has anything to say about it, this is just the beginning.
Watch the full interview below:
