Beartooth – How it All Started

From the age of 10, Beartooth frontman Caleb Shomo has suffered from debilitating depression and anxiety. At times his only solace came from listening to music.

In 2006, at age 14, he became the keyboardist of Westerville, Ohio, electro-metalcore band Attack Attack!, which signed a deal with Rise in 2008. In 2012, after Attack Attack! released their third album, This Means War, Shomo suffered a severe bout of depression and had to quit the group.

“We were on this tour and I was absolutely miserable,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to be in the band anymore, but I was scared to quit and I felt trapped. So I would just get plastered and absolutely stoned out of my gourd and then just lay in my bunk and have really bad thoughts.”

Before he split with Attack Attack!, Shomo wrote some songs that didn’t work for that group. While he tried to figure out what to do next, he got together with some members of My Ticket Home and banged out the songs he had written for fun.

“I started Beartooth with the intent of not having a band,” he says. “I just wanted something where we get together and write crazy songs and maybe do two weeks out of the year on the road, and just play local bars once a month or so for the hell of it. But when it started to take off, I just went with it.” Beartooth was then signed to Red Bull Records in 2003, and the band has been flourishing ever since. Destigmatizing mental illness and keeping the flame burning for rock music.

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Photo Credit:  Mikhail Bakunovich / Shutterstock.com