Herriot is a death metal band from Malaysia. Coming from the southeastern side of Asia we talked with Chen the band leader and vocalist of the band who explained us their projects and their approach to music.

Are you recording your full length debut?
Yes, we're going to enter studio on February to record a full length album, and the title is "Beyond Sun".

How did you ended signing with Psychic Scream Records?
Eric from Psychic Scream contacted me to ask us to join a compilation album under his label. Besides that, he also wanted us record an EP with him. And now, we're gonna have a full lenght under the same label.

Do you consider Herriot a death metal band?
Yes we are. We're a melodic death Metal band. We play aggresive death metal
with lots of melodic parts.

How is the work of three guitars in one band? Which is the main different
compared to a two guitar band?
Well..the difference can only be seen when you're playing live. Doing a recording, it's easy to do many layers of guitar riffs but it has a drawback. You can't do that while playing live with only 2 guitars. Our songs have got many harmonic guitar solos, so, we need at least 2 lead
guitars to do that job while playing live. We're just trying to play as close as we could to our recordings.

Are you influenced by music that is different from death metal? Who are they?
A lot of heavy metal bands, such as Iron maiden, Gothic bands like Sisters
Of Mercy, thrash metal like Kreator and Sodom..mostly metal.

Do you think you are going to use more clean vocals in the future?
Not much.I will only do clean vocals for slow gothic tinged songs.

What can you tell me about the new material that is being composed?
Hmm..much more complex...lots of good riffs..atmospheric and aggressive as
usual. These new materials are really great in my opinion. The band mates
have really put a lot of effort together in creating good tunes.

Are melodies an important part of Herriot´s music? Do you think that they
are the main characteristic of the band?
Definitely yes. We focused more on melodies and grooves to create our tunes.
I'm not really into the straight forward brutal kind of songs, i mean, i
like cannibal corpse and all, but my musical taste has always been melodic
ones, but yet still maintaining the aggressiveness aspect.

Are you touring to support "Celestial Obelisk"?
No. But with "Beyond Sun" we might.

Is there something you would have changed in "Celestial Obelisk" if you
had to record it again today?
Yes. I will do a re-arrangement on the music. When we did Celestial Obelisk,
we were still green, having formed for only a year. We never did any studio
work before and were seriously lacking in experience. I think Celestial
Obelisk is too straight forward and a bit flat but still it is really a good
effort and it came out really great.

Any final thoughts?
Thanks for the interview Federico, really glad to hear from a metal brother
from Argentina. Stay True!!!

Interviewed by Federico Marongiu