Concert Review + Photography: Beartooth w/ My Ticket Home, Affiance, Sylar, Witness

By Ryan G

Remember this phrase: FEAR THE TOOTH. You could be hearing it a bunch soon. More on that later.

With metal/crabcore mainstays Attack Attack! going through some major lineup changes, everyone within the heavy music scene has had their eye on what ex-frontman Caleb Shomo would be up to next. He formed a new band called Beartooth. No frills. No electronics. Just hardcore. And, this show at Kobo in Columbus was their first ever. What a show it was.

Witness opened the show with their brand of catchy metalcore that had some programmed elements thrown in. The band is quite tight musically and should have a rapidly expanding fan base soon. The guys are also really friendly and approachable. Keep an eye on IATU for a future review of their EP.

Sylar from New York followed up with more of the same, but to be honest I preferred Witness. The guys are good friends with Shomo and company though (Caleb was sporting a Sylar tank top throughout the Beartooth set). Vocalist Jay Panesso brought the hardcore/metal persona to the show in a big way – it’s likely this rubbed off from his time on the road crew of industry counterparts Emmure.

Affiance from Cleveland was probably my favorite act of the event outside of Beartooth. If Saosin became a metal core band, this is what they would sound like. Vocalist Dennis Tvrdik has got some pipes! Not very often does one find a vocalist equally talented at rough and clean vocals. The band was tight, catchy, and engaged the crowd well (of which there were a decent number of fans in attendance).

The surprisingly young My Ticket Home delivered a supporting set of melodic hardcore…maybe even borderline popcore at times? The Westerville based band I had had the impression they were relatively speaking, industry veterans. So, naturally the black “X”‘s on the members’ hands marking them as underage surprised me. The set was solid, but would pale in comparison to what was coming.

Fear the tooth. Shomo and company took 40 minutes to make that catchphrase one to be taken seriously. The set kicked off with Shomo imploring the spectators to complete “200 stage dives.” “I Have A Problem” kicked off the set in an incredibly brutal way, and the majority of the set was full of songs unfamiliar to those in attendance – no matter, though. People still went crazy, driven by Shomo’s continuous requests for stage dives. The true highlight would happen in the final song that people knew, “Set Me On Fire.” Following a testimony Caleb gave on the power of hope and the God behind it, he invited everyone onstage to await his command to “GO!” After said command, the pit exploded into a cacophonous cluster of thrashing bodies, and what is already being heralded as the “ceiling fan incident” took place. A fan hanging over the pit was bashed over and over by the waves of stage divers, and eventually people were hanging upside down from it. A guy thrust a half full trash can into the pit at that point, like a weightlifter riled-up by roid-rage. By the end of the song, trash was strewn about and said fan was no longer attached to the ceiling. Kobo owner Jacob Wooten was even more amused than annoyed by the spectacle. What a show.

Here’s a video of the ceiling fan incident:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jud9belX80&w=450&h=297]

CLICK THROUGH THE BELOW PICTURES FOR A CLOSER VIEW

 

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