Rising metalcore champions Heriot are embarking on their first headline tour of the UK in April. With that in mind, Metal Hammer recently sat down for a conversation with singer/guitarist Debbie Gough to discuss their new debut album Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell and a host of other topics. The most baffling of those topics was the great phantom window shitter of Birmingham.
Long story short: Debbie used to work in a guitar shop in the Midlands. One day, she walked up for her shift and saw the front window covered in poo. The list of questions that arose as she investigated the crime were almost countless: who did this? How did they elude CCTV detection? And why were there bracelets among the… evidence?
This portion of the chat was too fascinating and unhinged to go unpublished, so you may find it in its glorious entirety below. As for the rest of our conversation, you’ll be able to find it in an upcoming issue of Hammer, so keep your eyes peeled!
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.”
We have so many follow-up questions. How do you shit up something?!
“I think, maybe somebody was stumbling around and needed to make a quick pit stop and leant up against the window. Then they thought, ‘Oh no… there’s something coming here,’ and they just had to do it there and then.”
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!”
The shit was outside the shop then?
“Thankfully, it was. But the really good thing about going through the CCTV, you could see everyone’s live reaction to the poo. One colleague’s horrified, another one’s horrified, then my friend goes out and I run out, and I start swinging off his arm laughing at how ridiculous it was. It was like cow shit, it was like the mud at Download festival last year! Except with bracelets in…”
What do you think the deal with the bracelets was?
“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.”
Or it could have been like how serial killers leave a symbol behind when they claim a victim.
“Ha ha ha! We had weekly window cleaners. Every Monday they’d come to the shop. The owner was like, ‘I’m calling the cleaners!’, and I went, ‘No, dude, I’m not calling them to get shit off the window.’ You can’t really call the window cleaner on Thursday, when they’ve already come on Monday, and let them find a big pile of poo.”
But you can’t leave it there till next Monday either…
“My other workmate did it. 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!”
Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell is out now. Heriot tour the UK in April.
