Beartooth

About Beartooth

Beartooth started as Caleb Shomo's solo project in 2012, which is a polite way of saying it was his outlet after leaving Attack Attack. He was the keyboardist and clean vocalist for that band, but Beartooth went in a completely different direction — heavier, rawer, more personal. Shomo recorded the first EP, Sick, entirely by himself in his basement. That DIY approach gave the music its claustrophobic intensity, all feedback and frustration compressed into something that connected with people who felt the same way.

The full-length debut, Disgusting, came out in 2014 on Red Bull Records. By then Shomo had assembled an actual band to tour with, but he still handled most of the recording himself. The album was aptly named — songs like "In Between" and "Beaten in Lips" were messy and aggressive, mixing metalcore breakdowns with punk energy and lyrics about depression and self-loathing that didn't bother with metaphor. It wasn't subtle, but it wasn't trying to be. The album connected because it sounded genuinely desperate rather than performatively angry.

Aggressive followed in 2016 and refined the formula without sanding down the edges. "Hated" became one of their bigger songs, the kind of track that works equally well in a gym playlist or a therapy session. The production was cleaner but still had that basement-recording grit. Shomo's vocal approach — switching between singing, screaming, and something in between — became more controlled, though "controlled" is relative when you're still mostly yelling about wanting to break things.

Disease in 2018 showed a band getting more comfortable with melody. Songs like "Disease" and "Bad Listener" had hooks that stuck around, even when Shomo was screaming them. The album debuted at number 20 on the Billboard 200, which suggested they'd built a solid fanbase beyond the Warped Tour circuit. The themes were still heavy — mental health, anger, survival — but the music started allowing more light in.

Below came out in 2021 and leaned further into that direction. It was their first album for a new label and featured more clean singing, more dynamics, more moments that could almost be called anthemic. Tracks like "The Past Is Dead" suggested Shomo had figured out how to write about the same struggles without making every song feel like it was recorded during a panic attack.

These days Beartooth sits in that space between metalcore, post-hardcore, and hard rock that doesn't have a tidy genre name. They tour constantly, mostly with bands in similar territory. Shomo still writes and produces everything, which gives the project a consistent vision even as the sound evolves. The music remains rooted in processing difficult feelings through loud guitars, just with better production quality than that first basement EP.

Beartooth shows are organized violence. The pit runs the whole set, crowd is locked in, and Shomo's not phoning it in from stage. He's in it with them. Heavy and controlled, not chaotic.

Known for Disgusting, Aggressive, In Between, Beaten in Lips, Body Bag

See Beartooth Live