By Jase Walker
A stereotypical wet welcome for Heriot in Manchester, arriving to be greeted by a good old fashioned downpour but nothing to dampen the spirits of the band turning up to play a sold out show! Along for the stomp around the ÜK is hardcore thrash outfit, Inhuman Nature, who I caught earlier this year in Dead Institute means there’s a solid chance of my ears ringing well into the weekend.
The buzz in the downstairs bar prior to the show kicking off is extremely tangible as large groups filter in, clearly in high spirits for a proper good headbang on a Thursday night. Little doubt that it’s going to be a messy one and I’m here to witness the chaos unfold.
A bit later than I expected given the door times, it’s time for Inhuman Nature to kick off the show for what is already a pretty busy room, great stuff. The crowd eagerly brings themselves in after their singer motions them forward as and as you’d expect with a solid thrash show you’ve got a solid line of long hair being flung around right down the front. I do wish they’d do something about that mic feedback though, even with earplugs in, it’s quite piercing and deafening at times. There’s barely a stationary head in the room though, everyone in this room is here to get their head blown off by fast and noisy music and that’s exactly what they’re getting.
Summoning the energy of every battle jacket sporting bearded man in the room, they kick out riff after riff with barely a break for breath longer than a couple of moments. Thrash like this lives and dies on its riff writing and Inhuman Nature clearly has this as their core tenet, well other than lots of shouting and whammy bar wankery for some massive wailing guitar. Where Inhuman Nature really shines for me is when both guitarists are either riffing or hammering out melodies but harmonizing with each other. Their bass player is loud enough, and his tone fat enough to easily carry the grunt of their songs on their own which gives the guitars so much more room to go off and do wild things without the power of the songs dying off in the process. They’ve been a great choice to accompany Heriot on this tour and gone down a treat with the crowd, great start.
After some rather interesting pop music, including Craig David, as intermission music, the room fills with an incredible bass heavy drone as Heriot builds up to the start of their set. The crowd down the front look poised to go mental the moment the first crash hits, the rest intently focused on the stage. No sooner do I type this, the pit opens up and people are already going apeshit with reckless abandon and numerous pints are immediately sacrificed in the process. Heriot are sounding cataclysmic right from the start, Jake’s bass rumbles through the walls and floor while the guitars and drums carry the insanity of it all. The sheer aggression the band delivers oozes from every part of the performance, the sound, the way each member of Heriot takes a chance to scream and grimace any chance they get all the way to an audience looking like they’re trying to kill each other.
You need only to see the sort of reaction Heriot receives from their crowds to understand why Heriot have generated so much buzz, the people smashing into each other have been at it for essentially the entire set and if anything it’s only become more fierce as the sets pushed on! Heriot have easily been one of the best sounding bands I’ve seen in this venue as well, their sound engineer has done a bang up job of making their colossal sound fill every single corner of the Star & Garter, right from the piercing screams of Debbie, right the way through to Jake and and Julian’s relentless crushing rhythms. In addition to that both Debbie’s and Erhan’s guitars are immensely clear, every single chunky riff and wailing guitar sound immense.
Heriot are moving at incredible speed right now and thanks to their unique brand of metal and some incredibly well placed slots throughout the last couple of years has seen them catapulted into the wider UK scene. They’ve done incredibly well with this tour so far and they’re clearly capitalising on a chance that not many bands get so soon, selling out a venue like this is not an easy thing to do for quite a lot of acts that are still up and coming. Heriot are without a doubt on a fast track to much bigger slots and stages very soon and you’d be wise to not miss out on seeing a band like this when you get to see them so close.
Star & Garter has been thoroughly smashed tonight!
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