Beartooth - “To Feel Self-Love is Fucking Amazing”
By Honore Schmidt
Photo by Jimmy Fontaine
After nearly a decade charting frontman Caleb Shomo’s struggles with mental health across albums, Beartooth released single “Might Love Myself”, a song about self-love and empowerment, in late July, ahead of the October release of their upcoming album The Surface. Discussing the new album in a recent interview with Kerrang!, Caleb said, “To write a record that’s genuinely about self-empowerment, and finding your own path and your own happiness, from my first-person point of view, is fucking nuts.”
And maybe for any other band, it wouldn’t seem so “fucking nuts.” But for Beartooth, whose success seems in many ways predicated on Caleb grappling with depression, anxiety, and alcoholism, and the way those struggles manifest lyrically, an uplifting, euphoric album more than flips the script — it rewrites it in a way that is certain to change Beartooth moving forward, and creates a new lens through which to view the band’s past albums.
Beartooth’s first album Disgusting, released in 2014, resembles, both stylistically and lyrically, the screamo of the early 10s that it follows on the heels of. With a loud, frantic, but nonetheless intermittently melodic and produced sound, and lyrics focused inward, on the emotional rather than the political or social, Disgusting made room for Beartooth in a hardore genre that was in flux, and in this liminal space and time for the genre, frontman Caleb Shomo’s raw, pained, desperate lyrics take center stage. Lines like “Why go out and see the world on fire?” are hard to ignore when they’re screamed and growled at the end of a crescendo built from a quiet, melodic chorus, and the album’s overwhelming, cacophonous, and sometimes dissonant sound are reflective of lyrics describing internal conflict and intense emotional pain.
Photo by Jimmy Fontaine
Two years after Disgusting, in the midst of the 2016 election cycle, Beartooth released Aggressive. But rather than focusing outwards on the contentious political climate, Caleb Shomo’s lyrics on Beartooth’s sophomore album once again look inward, specifically at how the turbulent social and political climate arising from the election might impact the younger generation. On the title track, “Aggressive”, Caleb speaks to both his younger self and Beartooth’s young fans, growling out his frustrations with an oppressive, homogenous society with lyrics like “Chew us up, spit us out....Push us back, hold us down.” With an overall more cohesive sound than Disgusting, but a nonetheless angry, sometimes sad, oftentimes remorseful message, Aggressive finds Beartooth’s frontman reflecting on how external pressures — social issues, political upheaval, and ostracization — have weighed on his psyche, and continue to shape and warp the youth of today.
In 2018 Beartooth released their third album, Disease. Building urgently from the first track “Greatness or Death” to the title track and most well-known song off the album, Disease is an album that demands to be listened to. In “Disease”, Caleb Shomo bears unabashedly to his audience his internal chaos and self-doubt, asking “Is it taking over? Will it bury me? Or will clarity become the cure for my disease?” In the remaining ten tracks on the album Caleb stays stuck at this impasse, unsure of how to proceed in the wake of overwhelming internal struggle and the external pressure of other’s expectations. Backed by raw, grungy instrumentals, Caleb’s vocals on Disease become a centerpiece to each arrangement, begging to be heard and understood.
Beartooth began work on their fourth album, Below (2021), at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, and the album and Caleb Shomo’s lyrics are a time capsule for the depression, uncertainty, and hopelessness that ensued from isolation and lockdown. In his recent interview with Kerrang!, Caleb remarked that “[Below] was just the fucking bottom....It’s a period piece about COVID and lockdown and how that affected my mental health, and it was gruesome.” Desperation to claw one's way out from rock bottom, not knowing how to change or where to start, pervades each track as the album jumps from growly, unfiltered, enraged verses to soul-bearing, melodic choruses.
Since releasing Below two years ago, Beartooth has put out three singles, each with a noticeably more optimistic message than the last. Their 2022 release “Riptide” marks the end of Caleb’s journey grieving the angry, sad, depressed piece of himself that started Beartooth nearly a decade ago— an acceptance to change and start anew. “Sunshine!”, released earlier this year, follows in a similar vein, with lyrics that seem to cement Caleb’s commitment to recovery and change. The trilogy culminates with the release of “Might Love Myself” in late July. The track features raw, passionate vocals, with lyrics that describe a sort of sudden, amazing realization of self-love and acceptance. Speaking on this latest release, Caleb told Kerrang! “[Self-love] is something I’ve never really talked about, because it’s something I’ve never really felt. To feel self-love is fucking amazing.”
All three singles will feature on The Surface, an album that’s certain to usher in a new era for Beartooth and its frontman. In the absence of self-doubt and loathing, pain, and depression, what will come to the surface in Caleb’s lyrics? With the band’s fifth album scheduled for release on October 13th, it’s not long before we find out.
