Rising out of the Ohio metalcore scene with their back-to-basics hardcore stomp, Beartooth's anthemic choruses, aggressive style and raw lyrics are throttling ears around the world – in the raddest way possible.
Formed as a means of escapism, therapy and way of letting off steam by ex-Attack! Attack! vocalist/ keyboardist, Caleb Shomo – who at only 22 has an impressive musical resume – wrote and produced the entire 'Disgusting' album himself. “This band is just me being honest with myself. I put in a whole lot of effort and time and more honesty and emotion than I’ve ever put into a record.”
With uncensored lyrics driven by emotive experiences, guitarist Taylor Lumley says the tracks are so personal to Caleb that it takes its toll singing them too often. “There'll be tours where Caleb's like 'hey guys can we not play this song on the tour? It's rough for me to sing every night, emotionally.' Every time we play that song it brings him back to where he was when he wrote it. There'll be some tours where people are like 'why didn't you play that song?' And we'll just tell them we're trying something different, but really it's mentally taxing on a singer to play it and we don't want to make him sad 'cause he's our friend.”
A tight group of mates, the guys didn't think jamming in Caleb's studio basement would project them this far, but they treasure the fact it has. “We kinda just put [our music] out there like, 'maybe people will like it, who knows?!' But that's the thing, we don't really have expectations as a band. So long as we can play shows, have fun, and just be us, that is our goal.
“Before we go on stage every night, we all get together and huddle up and get ourselves ready. We'll talk, and by talk I mean just yell at each other, about how we're glad to be where we are and we're thankful we get to do what we get to do. Then we'll usually make up something really dumb and funny and we'll do a group shout of it and then we go out and rock.”
Sharing equal inspiration with brutal metalcore, old-school punk like The Ramones and the bombastic theatricality of Queen, Caleb's genre-hopping creativity hit agro-overdrive with 'Disgusting'. And Taylor laughs that “judging on the songs that I've heard so far from the next record, I think it's only gonna get worse, aggressive-wise. I'm a really big fan of angry, heavy, let it out music. I think it's just gonna get angrier and heavier and faster.”
Conveying strong messages against child abuse in 'Beaten In Lips' – which encourages victims to “keep on living loud and proud” – and alcoholism in 'Relapsing' and 'I Have A Problem', Taylor says the songs were never written to be anything special, its just what people turned them into. “['Beaten In Lips'] was written because at our shows we have a lot of people come up to us and talk to us about abuse and stuff like that. It's something that's always upset us and something that we're really against. That's why we put the information at the end of the video that we did because we wanted people to know that if they're dealing with this, it's not okay and there's a place you can go and people you can contact to get away from it.
“The fact that a lot of people are saying it turned into an anthem for that, that's cool, it wasn't our original intention, but if it can help some people out, with the information that we gave at the end of the video and online, then that's great. If we could actually help people out with it, that's rad. But that wasn't our intention.
“We don't want people to think that we're the reason they stopped doing something. We want people to know that THEY'RE the reason why they stopped doing something. If you can connect with the things we're saying and the things we've dealt with and put into our songs, that's awesome and I love that and I love knowing that there's people out there who deal with the same issues we do. But I don't want people to think that we're like trying to save their life or something 'cause that's just not us.
“We still deal with the same things or else we wouldn't put them in our songs. We just want people to know that if you connected with our song and it helped you figure something out in your life, that's awesome, but you're the one who figured it out, not us. And we want you to be proud of that. Be proud that you're able to change and move forward with your life, 'cause that's rad.”
Bringing their all to their live shows, the guys get in and among it as much as their fans. “Mostly it's just us being ridiculous on stage. We goof around a lot when we play. We always want to make sure we're having fun and people in the crowd are having fun. So we're pulling kids up on stage with us, getting down in the crowd, climbing up on top of people, jumping off stuff, making dumb faces at each other,” Taylor says.
“There's always that time period, like a week or two into us not being on tour where – we have a constant group message going, full of dumb stuff – at that point someone always goes 'alright, I'm bored, let's go back out please?' And everyone's like 'I know, me too!'.”
Touring Australia for the first time in May on In Hearts Wake's Skydancer tour, the boys will be joining post-hardcore heavyweights We Came As Romans and Melbourne six-piece Storm The Sky. Considering the boys are very particular who they tour with, it's obvious we're in for one hell of a ride. “Honestly, the deciding factor in pretty much every tour we've taken is 'are the dudes on the tour cool?' And by cool I mean, not like 'I have all these Instagram followers.' I mean are they cool to hang out with? Are they good people?
“We've turned down some tours that probably would've been big for us just because we were like, 'nah, they're not cool people, they're not good people, why would we want to tour with them?' And we've taken some tour offers solely based on the fact that we like hanging out on the bands on the tour.
“We know the guys from We Came As Romans really well, that was definitely a big deciding factor – that they were on it. We'd heard the name In Hearts Wake before, but never really heard any of their music so when we first got the offer, we were like 'umm, give us a day or two to decide'. And then we saw We Came As Romans were on it and we listened to In Hearts Wake music and we kinda asked around with bands who had played with them before 'are they good dudes, are they nice guys, are they cool to hang out with?' and we heard nothing but great things about them so we were like, yea, let's do this! We have a chance to go to Australia with great people, why wouldn't we do that?”
And who should we keep an eye on this year? “PVRIS, 100 percent. I think they're gonna be the biggest band in the world and they're some of the coolest people, and they write really rad music that just happens to be the catchiest stuff I've ever heard in my life.”
Beartooth Tour Dates
Thurs 28 - Fri 29 May – The Triffid (Brisbane)Sat 30 May – Roundhouse (Sydney)
Sun 31 May – Magpies (Canberra)
Tues 2 June – YMCA HQ (Perth)
Wed 3 June – Metropolis (Fremantle)
Thurs 4 June – HQ (Adelaide)
Fri 5 June – 170 Russell (Melbourne)
Sat 6 June – Arrows (Melbourne)
If you or someone you know is suffering from violence or abuse, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
