Beartooth

A one-man outlet from Columbus

Beartooth began in 2012 in Columbus, Ohio, as a solo project. Caleb Shomo had just left Attack Attack!, the metalcore band he had fronted through his late teens, and started writing under the name Noise before settling on Beartooth. He played everything on the early recordings himself and only assembled a band once he decided the songs deserved a stage.

The project signed to Red Bull Records in 2013, and the first full album, Disgusting, arrived in 2014. Aggressive followed in 2016 and Disease in 2018, each built on the same working method: Shomo writing, playing and producing in the studio, then a five-piece carrying the songs on the road. The line-up has shifted over the years, with Nick Reed, Brandon Mullins, Taylor Lumley and Kamron Bradbury all passing through. The band today is Shomo on vocals, Oshie Bichar on bass, Connor Denis on drums, and Zach Huston and Will Deely on guitars. On the new album all four contributed in the studio as well as on stage, a change from the one-man sessions of the early years.

The music has always sat at the accessible end of metalcore: hardcore-derived verses, big sung choruses, and lyrics about depression and self-loathing delivered without much disguise. That mix of weight and hooks is what carried the band from clubs to arenas.

The Surface and the radio breakthrough

Below, released in 2021, kept the band ticking over through the pandemic years, but The Surface was the commercial turning point. Released on 13 October 2023 through Red Bull Records and produced by Shomo across studios in Los Angeles, Columbus and Santa Monica, it debuted at number 42 on the Billboard 200 with 17,000 album-equivalent units and went to number one on Billboard's Top Hard Rock Albums chart. It reached number 24 in Germany and Scotland and number 12 on the UK Independent Albums chart.

The record's third single, Might Love Myself, became the band's first number one on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, and the album went on to produce back-to-back number ones at US active rock radio. A deluxe edition with seven extra tracks followed on 20 September 2024. Critics at the time praised the album's maturity and its willingness to fold rock and even country colours into the metalcore template, though the pop leanings divided long-term fans. By May 2026 the band's promoter was quoting more than 1.3 billion streams, one platinum single and one gold single in the United States.

Pure Ecstasy: a month in the studio

Pure Ecstasy, the sixth album, came out on 28 August 2026. It is the first Beartooth release on Fearless Records after more than a decade with Red Bull, and the first to be co-produced and co-written by someone other than Shomo: Jordan Fish, formerly of Bring Me The Horizon. The 11 tracks were recorded in roughly a month, and Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor holds a writing credit. Four singles preceded it: Free, Eyes Closed, Bullshit and the title track.

The record's subject is Shomo's own story. He came out to friends and family on 1 September 2025 and publicly earlier in 2026, after homophobic comments appeared under the Free video. He told NME he wanted to get ahead of it and say it on his own terms, and described the announcement as giving him the peace of mind to rip off the plaster. Fish had told him that his recent material, while creative, was not addressing what Beartooth had always been for, an outlet for internal struggle, and pushed him to write about exploring his identity. Free was the first result. Shomo told Rolling Stone Australia in September 2026 that this would probably be the most important record he would ever make.

The influences he has cited are not what the genre usually produces: Al Green, Aretha Franklin and above all Prince on one side, thrash and Metallica on the other, with the early hardcore of Every Time I Die, Stray From The Path and The Chariot underneath.

Reviews have been warm rather than rapturous. PopMatters gave it seven out of ten on 27 August 2026, finding that it highlights the band's talent for pop songwriting while pushing their heaviness in new directions, with djent-flavoured riffs and spoken-word build-ups that are new for Beartooth. The same review felt the lyrics lacked emotional depth given the subject. When The Horn Blows, writing on 26 August, called it an eleven-track masterpiece and singled out the closer, I Made It, as the most personal thing on the record.

Where they stand in September 2026

The band spent February and March 2026 as main support on Bad Omens' Do You Feel Love arena tour across North America, alongside President. The run took in the Delta Center in Salt Lake City on 22 February, Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on 6 March and TD Garden in Boston on 11 March, and it put the new material in front of arena crowds months before the album existed.

The Pure Ecstasy World Tour proper begins in Europe. The European and UK leg runs from 17 September 2026 at the Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt to 6 October at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, with Silverstein and Kingdom of Giants supporting. UK dates are London's O2 Academy Brixton on 3 October, Leeds O2 Academy on 5 October and the Glasgow Barrowland on 6 October. The route also takes in Oberhausen, Hannover, Brussels, Tilburg, Prague, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Milan, Zurich and Paris.

A twenty-date US leg, announced on 19 May 2026 with Live Nation, opens on 11 November at MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston and closes on 19 December at Hard Rock Live in Wheatland, California, with Don Broco, Magnolia Park and Windwaker on every date. Australia follows from 26 to 31 January 2027, with shows in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, the band's first visit there since 2023.

What a Beartooth show is like now

The most recent documented sets are the Bad Omens support slots, and they were tight. At TD Garden on 11 March 2026 the band played 11 songs in 45 minutes, from 7.45pm to 8.30pm. The running order barely moved across the tour: Might Love Myself opened, followed by In Between, Doubt Me, ATTN., Disease, The Lines, Free, Sunshine!, You Never Know and The Past Is Dead, with Riptide closing. Free was the only new song, and it was in the set weeks before the album was announced.

Even in a support slot the production was not modest. The Utah Concert Review described the Salt Lake City show opening with a massive banner across the back of the stage and four towering LED screens already flashing, and said the pit opened immediately. The reviewer wrote that Shomo does not perform like someone in an opening slot and moves like the room already belongs to him, and that the crowd sang the Riptide chorus louder than the stage. Rock DNA, reviewing the Newark date at the Prudential Center in March, noted the ritual call for everyone to jump before The Lines and observed that the live arrangements shift some songs, Disease among them, from minor to major keys, which makes them more uplifting than the recordings.

Shomo's voice is the centre of it. Reviewers across the run described raw, jagged screams set against clean singing that came across as surprisingly vulnerable in rooms that size. The headline shows this autumn will be longer, on three-band bills, and will carry far more of Pure Ecstasy. The first of them is Frankfurt on 17 September, so reviews of the full-length show are still to come.