ALBUM REVIEW: Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell – Heriot
Savage, versatile, utterly cataclysmic – if you’ve been paying even a modicum of attention to the UK underground over the past couple of years you will be well aware that HERIOT are all these things. The Bristol-based industrial metalcore outfit released one of the best and most destructive EPs of the year back in 2022 and for a while around then it felt like there was scarcely a heavy band that came to the UK without lining them up for a support slot. Now they find themselves on the massive Century Media Records, releasing their debut full-length Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell to a nuclear payload of hype that proves wholly justified when presented with the results.
First, the savagery. While they are a band of many talents, HERIOT really do nail the violence, their sound thick with death and sludge as vocalists Jake Packer and Debbie Gough trade brutish gutturals and twisted shrieks atop serrated metallic riffing and the kinds of breakdowns you should hide your kids from. On tracks like Foul Void and Siege Lord – both absolutely raging singles found in a first half that generally goes a little more directly for the jugular – much of this takes place against a backdrop of creeping atmospheric textures which loom over Will Putney’s impeccable mix in a way that seems only to heighten the stakes and scale and menace of it all.
Indeed, Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell gets even bigger and better when the band lean full tilt into these tendencies. Third track Opaline for example is perfectly placed at the midpoint of the album’s more aggressive first half, Gough’s haunting cleans guiding the way through shrouds of moody ambience only for the band to drop an industrial-grade bludgeoning on the listener to finish. Imagine if JESUS PIECE kidnapped CHELSEA WOLFE and you’re probably somewhere in the right ballpark – and hopefully well aware of just how much that is meant as a compliment.
Lashed and Visage take matters further still, the former a pulsating industrial crusher softened again by Gough’s captivating cleans, and the latter a gazey melodic showstopper whose penultimate placement in the tracklist works way better than if the band had just tucked it away at the end. Both are markers of a more ambitious and diverse second half in general – albeit with the absolute throat-rip of At The Fortress Gate playing something of an inverse role to the aforementioned Opaline on this side – and indeed of a record that is as masterfully paced and structured as any of its individual tracks are expertly executed.
The UK has a bit of a knack for doing this; like BURNER and CONJURER before them, HERIOT have delivered a debut full-length that dwarfs even the towering expectations surrounding its arrival. Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell is a record of terrifying, apocalyptic power, delivered with such care and attention to actual album craft that one quickly forgets just how young this band are. It’s a beast, a monster, a fire-breathing, earth-shaking, nightmare-inducing behemoth, ready to devour whoever and whatever stands in its way as it carries HERIOT to a deserved place at the top.
Rating: 9/10
Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell is set for release on September 27th via Century Media Records.
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