Beartooth

Weirdly enough, one of the most exciting bands in heavy metal stems from the same man behind one of its most maligned. Until 2014, Caleb Shomo was best known as the lead singer in Attack Attack!, and was a genuine laughing stock in the metal world for giving the world Crabcore. The internet meme based around a seconds long clip from one of the band’s videos massively overtook the popularity of the actual band but all was not well in the Attack Attack! camp for a different, far more serious reason. While the band were getting more and more popular, Shomo was constantly dealing with clinical depression that on more than one occasion left him suicidal, and he left the band in late 2012 for the sake of his health and safety.

Fortunately, he’d already been working on some Beartooth material, and in an attempt to reconnect with music as something he loved, rather than his job, he put together a full line-up for Beartooth with members of fellow Columbians My Ticket Home. By January 2013, Shomo had put his first batch of Beartooth songs on the internet and announced their first run of live shows in the Midwest. By June they were signed to Red Bull Records and their debut album “Disgusting”, was released in June 2014, followed by extensive touring, most notably on the 2014 Warped Tour and then in the United Kingdom on the 2015 Kerrang! Tour. Shomo has managed to gain something that has evaded many in the world of rock and roll, and that’s a second chance. Rather than be written off as a novelty act, he formed one of the most exciting acts in heavy metal and earned the respect of the very same people who derided him in Attack Attack!, and for that, Beartooth come highly recommended.