‘Don’t wanna sing another hopeless song…’ admits Caleb Shomo in Beartooth’s colossal, surprise new single Riptide – arguably the first genuinely happy-sounding track of their career. Following last year’s devastating fourth album Below (in which the frontman was ‘dragged deeper into the darkness than ever before’, as our 4/5 review stated), the 29-year-old is clearly in a much, much healthier place right now, having ditched alcohol in favour of putting the work in to his physical and mental well-being.
“Things are really awesome,” he tells Kerrang! from his home today, despite dealing with a spot of gutter-cleaning before our interview. “Life’s pretty cool. We just finished that Europe and UK tour, which was fucking awesome. Life is good – the vibes are good!”
Here, Caleb opens up on all things Riptide, what this means for more new Beartooth music, and the band’s return back across the pond again in 2023…
Riptide sounds pretty positive and uplifting – it’s a little different to the usual dark Beartooth…
“Yeah, it’s a little different to being really fucking sad (laughs).”
What was it like writing a song in this happier mindset?
“It was an incredibly emotional experience, for sure. I think I wrote it about a week into me quitting drinking, which was pretty nuts. It was the first piece of music that I had written without alcohol being involved in… I don’t know, probably 10 years, which was really interesting. There was just like a lot of stuff coming up – a lot of, ‘Wow, there’s other things to talk about.’ To me it is a bit of a sad song in certain parts, because it’s me discovering that I’ve putting myself through a lot that I probably didn’t need to over the years. It was the first time I’m starting to realise there is another way, you know what I mean? I just want to be happier, and I realised there were a lot of things that I could have been doing, that I wasn’t doing; I was putting small bandaids on giant open wounds. I’ve started to make a few choices that I think really helped me: I spent a while with a therapist, and I think that was really helpful for me to start moving forward on some things, and just chasing mental health, physical health, all that stuff. So all of that accumulated into this song. The quitting drinking thing was a pretty big moment for me – that was actually a really big shift. I didn’t know if it was actually going to do anything or not, and a waste of my time, but it was very emotional. And yeah, I’m starting to realise now that there are better ways for me to function, that I think just make me a lot happier. And it’s cool! And that’s where Riptide came from.”
Were you apprehensive about approaching the creative process and trying to write a song while sober?
“It was just different, you know? The energy was a lot different. I don’t even really know how to explain it. When I would sit around with a Scotch just kind of contemplating life, that had a flow and a vibe that came out of it. But this just felt a lot more high-energy – it was like replacing the ‘contemplating, thinking’ kind of thing with just energy, and expression, and just ‘Bleurgh!’ Like, it happened really quick. It was a very intense experience, but I’m cool with it! And then from there I went out to California and wrote for almost a month, just working on stuff for our next album that’s gonna come after the single. And that was my first bigger chunk of time writing without drinking, and I felt like I was a lot sharper. Obviously the booze is only going to affect so much – you’ve got to be creative, and you’ve got to have the drive to write, and to capture that lightning in a bottle. It just feels like there’s a lot more lightning to capture more often – when I’m hot, I’m really, really hot; and when I’m cold, I’m able to kind of peel back and recharge a lot faster.”
How fruitful were those California sessions? Have you written a new album, or just made a really good dent?
“It was a really good dent! I still have a lot to work on, but it showed me the direction that I’m going. I know this sounds incredibly corny, but the records kind of write themselves, in a way, after one or two songs or ideas. I feel like I start to get the vibe, and the record starts to kind of take shape. With Below, to use that as an example, I wrote The Past Is Dead as the first song, and I’d put together a couple of pieces of The Last Riff, and after that it just all made sense. I knew the direction, I knew where it was headed, and I could just go along for the ride. That’s kind of how far I am in the next album’s process. We have Riptide and then I have a good handful of other stuff that is like, ‘Okay, this is what it sounds like.’”