Northampton’s Roadmender is such an odd venue these days, it’s sort of a trial by fire in a way. Fair enough you can get a full crowd in the likes of Manchester, London, Glasgow, etc, but what happens when you have a half full venue in the midlands? It really becomes a show of how good a band you are if you can incite a smaller crowd, with a bunch of room to move and get rowdy. This was the task for Beartooth this evening, with support from The Color Morale and Dead Harts. A small tour in the run up to Slam Dunk Festival, the bands played all around the country, to relatively out there venues, and by Christ, they gave it their all.
Playing to what was certainly the smallest crowd of the evening, Dead Harts, who are the British component to tonight’s trio. The problem was apparent though when the crowd weren’t entirely into it from the beginning, the size of which suited a venue half the size. Regardless, a few people were certainly getting involved, and tracks like ‘Sunny Side Cocktail ‘and album title track,’ Cult For The Haggard Youth’ sounded thoroughly tight and vicious. Vocalist Matthew Baxendale launched himself into the crowd twice to try and get some movement, but sadly this only lasted for so long. Still, the sound was good, bar the one broken microphone and the performance was commendable.
The Color Morale were up next, and regardless of the fact that they continue to spell colour wrong, managed to build the crowd up more and more as their set went along. It was obvious that those present may not have known the band all too well, which may have attributed to the lukewarm reaction to begin with, but by the end, and especially through ‘Strange Comfort’ the band really started to win over some fans. It’s very commendable how the band really attempt to bring a message with their music, campaigning for greater knowledge of depression and self-harm and trying to be a beacon of light out of it. Regardless to this, if you don’t have the tracks then no one’s going to listen to you. The older songs were the more recognisable, and garnered the biggest responses, but overall the band looked hyped and had more than enough energy to get everyone going. Garrett Rapp’s vocals may have sounded a little off here and there, but we’ll put that down to mixing more than anything else. They certainly built the crowd up for the main event.
Beartooth are the reason everyone turned up. It’s hard to think that this time last they were a relatively unknown property, but since the release of their debut album Disgusting, the band have well and truly rocketed in the eyes of fans everywhere. As well as their music, the band are becoming more and more well known for their spirited and non-stop live shows, which were certainly apparent this evening. The crowd gathering in front of the stage was certainly the largest that had been seen this evening, but vocalist Caleb Shomo was the first to really create a whirlwind of movement throughout the venue. At no point did he seem satisfied with the amount of action happening in front of stage, and every time he asked for me, he bloody got it. As they only have one EP and one album released, there isn’t much in the way of a back catalogue to move through, but they got through each track one after the other fairly quickly, and each was reciprocated by voices and great reactions from the crowd.
When you think of Beartooth you’re welcomed with banging track after track. Songs like ‘Beaten In Lips’, ‘Body Bag’, ‘In Between’, ‘The Lines’, all are instantly recognisable, and all have a chorus that you can really belt back at the band. There were a couple of moments throughout the set when the band were having problems with their guitars, either a broken string, or lack of signal to the amps, but both times were played off fairly well, and didn’t get overly awkward. Caleb’s voice is powerful, and the guitar work from Taylor Lumley and Kam Bradbury were well and truly on point, when working. If not for a couple of hiccups technically and had the venue been a little bit more packed this would have been the perfect set, although due to this, it did drop down slightly. This should not be taken away from the band though, who put in one hell of a performance with the resources they had at hand.
