Live Review: Showing Teeth | Barfly Camden, London | 14/07/26
Outbreak host the world’s favourite rising metalcore act, Showing Teeth, for their first-ever headline show at Barfly Camden, following their incendiary, crowd-winning support slot for Bring Me the Horizon just three days prior.
Exit Dream
When you hear a supergroup featuring Holding Absence’s drummer Ashley Green and ex-Napolean vocalist Wes Thompson are supporting the seething metalcore phenomenon, Showing Teeth, you expect…well, not Exit Dream, that’s for sure. And the British four-piece know it. “I know our music’s very different to Showing Teeth, so I appreciate you being so patient,” Thompson reiterates on a number of occasions, endearing the less-than-lively crowd to him in a way their music doesn’t quite manage. Since this is also their third show ever as a band, respect has to be given where respect is due – even if their performance does hit with all the force of an awkward elevator ride with last night’s drunken hook-up. Some determined shredding from Murry Deaves and Luke Shadrick, and the vivacity rolling in torrents off of Green’s drumming, elicits a dynamic one-man kung fu pit and some light crowd headbanging. But by the time they leave the stage, the crowd is practically frothing at the mouth for tonight’s headline debut.
Showing Teeth
A lot of the time when people talk about feeling the anticipation in the air, it’s barely more than a figure of overused speech. But tonight, for Nashville’s rising metalcore act Showing Teeth, it’s visceral. The fuzzy aircon wafting over the crowd and wacky electronic sound effects as the band take to the stage simply enhance the feeling of excitement bouncing off Barfly Camden’s walls.
“If you’ve never moshed, now’s the time to find out if you can,” says singer Addison, who first learnt how to scream by screaming along in the car and posting videos to TikTok, where bullies didn’t hold back in the comments. But like the rae of sunshine (this pun’s for Daniel P. Carter, who accidentally called her Addison Rae on live radio) that she is, Addison simply used the harsh criticism as a push to learn, and to learn fast. Having just come off the back of supporting Bring Me the Horizon on one of the most unhinged anniversary shows and deathcore parties of the year, it’s safe to say she’s nailing it, and creating a safe space for music fans to celebrate with her whilst she’s at it.
With only two songs (and one collab) officially to Showing Teeth’s name, it’s unreleased banger after unreleased banger – and the crowd laps up every second. Security quickly gives up trying to intervene with the pits and the very persistent crowdsurfing attempts and, in the words of tonight’s conductor of chaos herself, “it’s fucking sick”. She weaves Nashville-twanged humour, goofiness and humility in between every guttural screech and luminous melody, and each member of the band looks like they’re either about to spontaneously combust or climax, so fired up is the energy on Barfly Camden’s stage tonight.
Showing Teeth concludes their staggering first-ever headline show with the bouncing, venomous single that is Labyrinth, bringing out every inch of ferality as yet unexpelled in the crowd. Without a shadow of hyperbole, Showing Teeth was born to do this, and lips are being licked across the metal world to see what storms she’ll whirl up next.
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Showing Teeth