Since their first gig in 2013, Beartooth have not only grown into a certified arena band, but their live reputation has exploded with them. Frontman Caleb Shomo tells us – via 10 vital gigs – how they’ve done it.
From huge festival sets, to massive headlining triumphs, to that time they played a tiny show to 80 people in The K! Pit, Beartooth have never not blown us away live. Caleb Shomo looks back over the gigs that left a mark on him…
“It was the start of everything for me with this band. I decided, ‘I’m going to actually do this thing with Beartooth. This isn’t just going to be something that I keep on a hard drive. I’m willing to now show this to people.’ We did this show in a tiny, 75-capacity venue with way too many people in there, and it was nuts. It was a really fun time. It was this explosion of energy that I’d had bottled up for a long time. It was amazing.”
“That’s still, to this day, the most unbelievable ‘What the fuck?’ moment of my entire life. We were playing early, I didn’t know if people were going to show up, I had no idea what to expect. I was like, ‘Even if we play to 100 people, it’s just cool that I get to play here at all.’ But they showed up! I have a picture of that show, with the endless sea [of people] – you couldn’t see the end of it. It was incredibly overwhelming. I have no idea if I was any good or not, but I do not care. I will always remember that moment of walking out there, looking out, and just seeing all those people watching us.”
“It was the first show we ever played with pyro, which was really exciting. When I started this thing, I didn’t really care what happened with it. I thought, ‘I don’t want to take this too seriously.’ Our booking agent asked, ‘Do you have any goals?’ I remember I said, ‘I want to play a show with fire.’ We played that show and we had fire. The feeling when it went off onstage for the first time was so powerful and addicting. I’d never felt anything like it. I was like, ‘This is what it’s about!’”
“It was the last proper year of Warped Tour happening. There were so many people that came out and supported [us], so many friends. Warped Tour was a massive part of my growing up. For all of my formative years, those summers were spent on Warped Tour, they were really crucial years. To see it go and to play that show was almost like putting a part of my life and my youth to rest. Realising that it was gone and celebrating that with so many good friends at such a cool venue was really powerful.”
“Architects have one of the best, if not the best, metal shows that you’ll ever see. They have been a band for a very long time, and they’ve gone through so many things and come out of them in such a powerful way. That whole tour was wild. But Wembley, specifically, was incredible. That’s a sacred venue. I remember the first time I walked in there and looked at the place, thinking, ‘Yeah, this is fucking huge.’ Oh my god, I hadn’t realised how big that place is. Being able to be there and support them in their moment, headlining this monumental thing in this absolutely amazing moment for their career, was huge. But it was also important for us. We were met with a seriously cool crowd, and we were met with so much support. To have my first Wembley experience be with a band that I have so much respect for, supporting their moment, it still made my top 10 Beartooth shows, and it wasn’t even our moment. That’s how powerful that show was.”
“That show, to me, solidified us as a band in Germany. I feel like it was a really good marker of something. Beartooth in Germany is like a whole different animal these days. That was the show that really solidified it. I couldn’t believe it. We were playing very late. We were playing on a side-stage and I did not know what to expect. I thought we’d maybe have a decent crowd because we were doing okay in Germany at that point, but it was packed. We had all the bells and whistles and fire and explosions, all this stuff that we didn’t usually get to play with. It was a very intimidating show. But we went up and really did our job. Ever since then, something’s just been different with us in Germany, so Rock Am Ring will always have a very special place my heart.”
“It was our biggest headline show we’d done in Australia, but the people that booked it were not so sure that we were going to be worth it. They booked it in a way that was very, very strenuous on us. We didn’t really have any crew, and we had four shows in a row with no days off. In Australia, you have to fly between every show, and Sydney was the third one of the four. Flying, by nature, is really hard on your voice because you’re in this pressure-controlled thing with dirty, dry air circulating. We woke up super-early and our flight was delayed. I was stressing out, going, ‘Something just feels weird.’ We soundchecked and I had nothing going on aside from being able to talk very quietly. In the green room, I was crying and having a complete meltdown. But we don’t cancel shows lightly – we’re very much, ‘The show must go on.’ I remember walking on that stage with nothing and saying, ‘I can barely speak, help me out if you can.’ The crowd helped me through it, and then three, four songs in my voice started to come back and I was able to get through the show. It changed everything about the mentality of how I approach shows.”
“That was crazy. We’ve done house shows before, and those are always a really special thing, but we hadn’t done it in a very long time. We couldn’t hear anything. We had no monitors. We had no in-ears. We just turned up our amps and gave it our best. It was a really special moment, and it was really cool to get to do it. It was a very intimate show, and I don’t know when we’ll ever do anything like that again, but it was one for the books.”
“My voice was terrible that day. I sounded rough, and trying to work through that was very wild. But I decided not to worry about it, and tried to just enjoy the show for what it was. Whether I felt very strong or not, I was super-present. I remember that show so well, and being able to wield a flamethrower while headlining, that’s the stuff that my dreams are made of.”
“That was my third time in Australia with Pierce The Veil. I’ve been touring with that band for a very long time. But that Brisbane show was the last show of the tour and it was the biggest show – 8,200 people in this big amphitheatre. We were closing, and that’s intimidating. Playing after Pierce The Veil is no picnic. I had this very profound moment that I have never had until that day. It was actually right after I went out to watch them start. I came back to the dressing room and I had this overwhelming feeling. I may sound crazy when I say it, but I just knew this was going to be one of the best performances I’d ever put on in my life. It was like divine intervention or something. We’ve had shows before that I barely remember because I was so overwhelmed with nerves and stress. But at that Brisbane show, I will never forget that feeling of knowing that it was going to happen before it happened.”
“It was a festival tour that was really, really difficult for us. We were dealing with a
lot of very heavy personal things going on in our lives. That show, I didn’t even remember what it was until I got off the bus and was walking to the dressing room. I got on the stage and looked out and I was like, ‘Oh, this is fucking enormous.’ I was in no way prepared for that, mentally. But I think that was one of the cool things about it – it was one of the most monumental shows I’ve ever played in my life. It really solidified to me, ‘Okay, we’re doing something special here.’ Man, it was so cool. It was raining that day, but then at the end the sun came out while we were playing. It felt indescribable.”
Beartooth tour the UK from October 21 – get your tickets now. This article originally appeared in the autumn 2024 issue of the magazine.
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