Mikki Nobody of Moshville Radio talked to Heriot’s Julian Gage earlier this month. Here’s the first part of that interview, the entirety of which will be broadcast on The Blegh Witch Project with Mikki Nobody and Ota Legosoup at 7pm on October 27th.
Mikki Nobody (MN) – We are ed by Julian Gage. He’s the drummer for quite possibly the hottest band in the country at the moment, Heriot! Thank you for spending some of your very very precious time with us at Moshville Radio.
Julian Gage (JG) – Thank you for having me.
MN – So first of all, congratulations on the new album, ‘Devoured by the Mouth of Hell’. I’ve had more than a quick skim through since it came out last week, and it’s absolutely fantastic. I do need to get my hands on a vinyl copy, so I’m gonna grab one this weekend.
JG – Thank you. Thanks for checking out.
Ota (O) – Have you guys done anything cool for the vinyl release?
JG – We have a variant, which is exclusively ours, which is just transparent red. I think the main kind of version that you can get in, like, the big stores is like transparent orange. So we do have one variant, but nothing too exciting. No, splatter or anything like that, unfortunately. Which is a shame because we really wanted to, but that they will basically told us no. But maybe, if these ones go well, then maybe we can twist their arm into making us do it on the second press, but yeah, we’ll see. Collectors do love the variants. We want to. So, I mean, we’re selling well. So hopefully, we can get a second print on the go soon.
MN – So How, why and what got you into drumming? Specifically in the style you do as well.
JG – I don’t really know. It’s a bit of a weird weird one because my family weren’t really musical at all. I was the only person to ever kind of pick up an instrument that I know of anyway. But my parents always kinda had music on when I was a kid. Nothing, like, heavy. They were kind of into, like, Placebo, Muse, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, kind of that stuff. Just growing up in the late nineties, that was always around. But then, I discovered Kerrang TV, and that’s where Slipknot, Korn and bands like that were. I found those kinds of bands myself and made my mum and dad go and buy me those records when I was a kid. And then somehow, I managed to persuade them to buy me a drum kit, which they were very reluctant to do at first. I convinced them that it wasn’t a phase and I stuck at it and here we are.
MN – I bet they’re certainly not regretting that decision now. Although I’m sure they had different opinions at the time.
JG – They’re very proud now, yeah. It took a while though. It’s all been worth it in the end.
O – It’s not very often you get parents that are ive of their kids doing something as noisy as drumming.
JG- Yeah. They were reluctant at first because they thought I wasn’t gonna keep it up. So they didn’t wanna buy me a kit, and they didn’t see me play drums for a few years until they bought me a kit. And then they quickly moved that kit into the garage because it was too loud, and it stayed there for a few years. Then I moved out, and it wasn’t a problem anymore.
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MN – Have you been able to have the redemption moment of “I told you so” yet?
JG – Yeah. I mean, I’ve never really, like, put it on them like, “I told you it wasn’t a phase”. I always joke about it, but they’ve always been my . They used to drive me to all the gigs we used to do when we were kids before any of us could drive. So my parents have always been very ive of what I do even if it wasn’t what they probably hoped initially when I was growing up. They probably wanted to play football or something or be a doctor maybe. I don’t know.
MN – So can you tell us, how did Heriot initially come around? Who had the initial idea? Who came got across to who and said, “Hey, I’ve got this. I think you’re gonna be perfect for it?”
JG – It started as a project that Erhan (Guitar) and Packer (Vocals, Bass and Samples) wanted to do. I initially said no to a few times because I was in another very rubbish Swindon band at the time. So it was kind of a side project thing that they wanted to do. I think when I said yes to it, we were all at a festival, and I was drunk and I was like, “Yeah, fine, I’ll do it”. And then, we met up, like, 2 weeks later and wrote some songs and put those songs out pretty quick. But, yeah, we never really took it that seriously until, like, the last 4 or 5 years, when Deb (Vocals & Guitar) ed the band. It was 10 years ago we started in 2014, so it’s been 10 years since the initial 3 piece version of Heriot was born. But it’s not like we, kind of shun that era. Everyone knows it exists, but we kind of started fresh when Deb ed the band. But that stuff is out there for those that know. I know you know about the older stuff.
MN – I did notice a lot of it got taken down, obviously, with the evolution of the band when you got Debbie, and I noticed a lot of it kinda went black all off the Internet. I think there’s 1 or 2 lingering ones on YouTube you can track down if you know what you’re looking for. And, yeah, it’s hard to find them all now.
JG- Yeah. It was very much intentional. It’s not like we’re not proud of that stuff, but it’s just it’s not really a good kind of picture of where we’re at today. Once Deb ed, it kind of changed the dynamic so much that it didn’t really feel right to keep it. It kind of gave us a fresh start as well, because then we could pitch to kind of the industry that we’re a new band. The only thing that kinda stayed the same was the name, because we always liked the name and we weren’t established before, so it didn’t really matter that we kept the name. It was kind of calculated and planned out, and it all panned out nicely in the end.
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O – Would you ever consider revisiting any of that older material at some point in the future? Like, reworking it into new songs, or rerecording it with Deb in the band, or anything like that?
JG – There was a song that we only took out of the set from last year. There’s an old song called Violence. And we only ever kept that in the set because we didn’t have enough songs. And it was the only kind of old song that we all agreed on, and we were like, “Right, we’ll keep playing this”. But everyone thought it was a new song who got into the band later who didn’t know that it was an older one that was around when we were 3 piece. But it’s kind of probably the closest to what current Heriot is, I guess. We didn’t really change it at all. Deb had no vocals on it, so it’s just Jake. But she still really likes that song. We were gonna try and take riffs from it for the album, but we had decided not to in the end. But all those songs still exist. There’s a few old songs that have riffs that I like, so yeah, maybe. Who knows? Because they’re gonna be new. If we reuse them, they’re gonna be new to everyone, so yeah, the option is there. We were talking about a tune the other day actually, called Trojan, which we put out 7 years ago, on a split EP that no one ever heard. So we could easily take riffs from that for future stuff because we all liked that song then, so there’s no there’s no reason why we couldn’t. I would like to.
This is only the first 15 minutes of the full 45 minute interview with Julian Gage from Heriot – To hear the entire interview, tune into Moshville Radio via www.Moshville.Radio or ask your smart devices to “Play Moshville Radio” on October 27th at 7pm (UK time) to tune into The Blegh Witch Project with Mikki Nobody and Ota Legosoup.
Header image by Harry Steele
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