ALBUM REVIEW: Disease – Beartooth

As far as crossover bands go, BEARTOOTH had the concept nailed down back in 2014 with their debut record Disgusting. The quintet managed to find a balance between the rough and tumble of hardcore, and the seduction of melodic metalcore; it was hard to not get on board. 2018 sees BEARTOOTH return with their third offering, Disease.

Disease is a record that is a challenge to pick apart at its roots, perhaps intentionally so. The Ohio bruisers’ third full studio album refuses to double down on a particular style, and it’s difficult to figure out exactly what BEARTOOTH were going for here. In fairness, it’s this hop scotching between genre’s that allowed the band to catch on fire in the first place. But by this point – the mantra feels over-exposed.

The opening double punch of Greatness Or Death and the title track put the record in good stead, with the former’s thumping hard rock edge, and the latter’s beautiful melodic vulnerability. But Disease never manages to keep up the consistency from here, and what follows is the odd moment of intelligent song-writing surrounded by decent metalcore. There’s nothing here that’s inherently bad, or poorly produced; but you do get left with a taste that’s incredibly familiar. BEARTOOTH should by no means be scolded for sticking to what they’re good at, however there’s nothing on Disease that even comes close to the bands staple tracks such as In Between, The Lines, Beaten In Lips, Hated, or Sick Of Me.

As a record Disease is nigh-on tokenistic in its use of breakdowns at times, and the lack of variation when they land hurts the album as a whole. Both You Never Know and Used And Abused are straight up hammer punching rock knocks which actually suffer from the band’s apparent obsession to still sound as heavy as possible. While breakdowns are part and parcel of metalcore, BEARTOOTH‘s inability to mix things up makes it difficult to differentiate between which beatdown is which.

Oddly, it’s on Believe and Clever where Disease hits its peak, and neither track pays homage to a mosh call once. The ballad-esque intimacy of Caleb Shomo‘s vocals is a welcome addition here, both tracks are structured with a fine liner. In a record where genuine quality has an uphill task making its way to the surface, BEARTOOTH have stumbled across two songs that could have found their way on to either of the bands previous records. The same can’t be said for a large portion of these tracks’ surrounding efforts.

While a re-invention of BEARTOOTH here may have rubbed some fans the wrong way, the inescapable fact is that Disease is almost nothing that you haven’t heard before. This record by no means pushes the band off a cliff, but by this point in their career you would have hoped that the quintet would have found a way to bridge their sound into something more than it was in 2014. If you were hoping that BEARTOOTH‘s shot into super stardom was coming soon, you may have to wait a little longer.

Rating: 6/10

Disease is out now via Red Bull Records.

Like BEARTOOTH on Facebook.