Beartooth – “Aggressive” [Album Review]

For some time now, there has been a massive hole in the market for a band to really tap into that audience of angry, frustrated teenagers and, there are moments on Aggressive, where post-hardcore bruisers Beartooth could be the group who that enormous demographic are looking for. Don’t get me wrong, Aggressive is at times a ferocious listen but, for every face-stover like “Always Dead” there is a track like “Loser” where Caleb Shomo really just nails that teen angst emotion.

A man working through the issues rattling around in his head, Shomo is the voice that millions of teenagers across the world need. “I’m sick of the person I used to be” Shomo hollers during “Sick Of Me” and you can just picture thousands of kids screaming this back at him. Yes, the music may be built to cause maximum mosh pit carnage, but it’s Shomo’s lyrics that are the real hook on this album, and that hook clearly has the potential to capture the hearts of a new generation of young rock fans. “Fairweather Friend”, “Hated”, “King Of Anything”, they’re all songs built around frustration, anger and self-loathing but they’re also songs that will give teenagers an outlet to vent and that can only be a positive thing.

The beauty of Aggressive is that, whichever way you use Shomo and his bandmates’ music, be it screaming the lyrics to “Loser” at your bedroom wall or having a right good tear up in the moshpit to the punk snarl of “Sick Of Me”, you’ll feel a whole lot better by the end of it. Towards the end of Aggressive, when Beartooth rattle through “Rock Is Dead”, with Shomo howling “if rock n’ roll’s dead you can kill me now”, it clearly very much isn’t, with Shomo in the kind of position now where his band and music could really make their mark.

Aggressive Track Listing:

01. Aggressive
02. Hated
03. Loser
04. Fair Weather Friend
05. Burnout
06. Sick Of Me
07. Censored
08. Always Dead
09. However You Want It Said
10. Find A Way
11. Rock Is Dead
12. King Of Anything

Run Time: 39:55
Release Date: June 3, 2016

Check out the track “Hated”