For Caleb Shomo, Pure Ecstasy is not Beartooth reinventing itself.
It is Beartooth remembering exactly why it existed in the first place, the sixth Beartooth album arrived on Friday, August 28th via Fearless Records, and it catches Shomo somewhere between absolute joy and the most painful experiences of his life.
There is no comfortable middle ground here, that is intentional.
Beartooth ‘Beautiful Again’ video
Speaking with us ahead of Beartooth’s Australian Pure Ecstasy tour in January (2027), Shomo explains that after more than a decade of using the band as an emotional pressure valve, this record forced him back towards the fundamental purpose behind it all.
‘I think if anything, it just solidified to me what Beartooth really is about,’ Shomo says.
‘The point of Beartooth from day one was for me to provide myself with a space where I can work through my shit, say anything that I need to say, write any music that I want to write, and just let my emotion out.’
For Shomo, music remains a language that makes more sense than ordinary conversation.
‘I feel like I can speak music a lot better than I can speak English or any or other medium of trying to translate emotion.’
That philosophy runs straight through Pure Ecstasy.
‘This is about as core of a Beartooth record as there has been since I don’t know the first one,’ he says.
‘I just said I do not care what the outcome is, other than is this exactly what I wanted to make, and did I not water it down, and did I really talk about what I needed to talk about.’
Beartooth ‘Free’ video
‘Free’ scared the hell out of him
Nowhere is that honesty more exposed than ‘Free’ (above).
Shomo has described the track as one of the most truthful things he has ever written, but getting there was far from comfortable.
‘Oh my God! Absolutely,’ he says when asked whether he ever hesitated about releasing it.
Before ‘Free’ took shape, Shomo had spent close to a year writing material he now describes as more abstract and emotionally detached.
‘I had this whole body of work that wasn’t really about anything lyrically.’
Then ‘Free’ reset the entire record.
‘I mean, it was so personal and so f***ing scary, and something that, I mean, I’m writing about something that I was still in the middle of processing myself.’
The fear, strangely enough, became a sign he was getting somewhere useful.
‘Most of the good Beartooth songs I’m always pretty f***ing scared of because usually I know whether it’s a song that people can translate easily or not I always know what they really mean.’
Rather than soften what was happening, Shomo went further into it.
‘I just said what I was feeling in those moments.’
There was also an acceptance that worrying about what happened afterwards could kill the entire process.
‘If I don’t make this record, you know, if I choose to just be too scared to write what’s really going on in my life, I’m gonna regret it.’
Beartooth ‘Bullshit’ video
Jordan Fish helped crack the door open
A crucial figure in that process was Jordan Fish.
The former Bring Me The Horizon member contributed to several songs on Pure Ecstasy, including ‘Free’, ‘Eyes Closed’ and ‘Beautiful Again’, but Shomo says his influence went considerably deeper than arrangement or production.
‘It surprised me how amazing he was at providing a place for me to do nothing but write lyrics and and melodies about what’s really f***ing going on in my life.’
Fish also seemed to know when Shomo needed pushing.
‘Always encouraging me to carry on when I didn’t feel like I had the strength to, or when I got too scared.’
Shomo describes Fish as an ‘unbelievable producer’, but it was the emotional environment he created that mattered most.
‘The way he was able to know me as a person and continue to craft a space, no matter what I was going through, where I could feel safe enough to just let out all of my shit.’
‘I credit so much of the the honesty to him.’
That honesty is all over ‘Beautiful Again’ (above), which Shomo has described as capturing the album’s emotional split between ‘pure joy and pure despair, nothing in between’.
That duality also explains the title.
What ‘Pure Ecstasy’ actually means
Choosing Pure Ecstasy for a record loaded with pain could sound almost deliberately contradictory.
For Shomo, that contradiction is exactly the point.
‘The thing with this record is it is just extremes. There is no middle ground. It is extreme highs or extreme lows, but that’s exactly where I was.’
At the time, Shomo says his world felt like ‘50% joy, 50% the most painful experience I’ve ever been through’.
The title became less a description of where he was and more a declaration of where he wanted to end up.
‘I wanted that title to really manifest the outcome.’
That outcome, ultimately, is self-love.
‘It’s like pure ecstasy. To me, is like is self love. You know what I mean. That’s what the feeling I’m chasing.’
For a band whose catalogue has travelled through Sick, Disgusting, Aggressive, Disease, Below and The Surface, it feels almost like the logical next chapter.
Not everything is fixed, but something has shifted.
Success brings its own pressure
Beartooth have changed dramatically since Shomo began the project in his basement in 2013.
The rooms are bigger, the audience is bigger, the business surrounding Beartooth is bigger, therefore so is the weight.
‘There’s definitely always pressure. I mean, once you get successful, it’s hard to not feel that weight.’
Part of that pressure comes from knowing Beartooth now supports far more people than just Shomo.
‘This band, this crew. There’s a lot of mouths to feed. There’s a lot of people that devote their life and their time and and all this work they’ve put in their craft into this thing.’
Trying to honour all of that while maintaining a clear artistic vision can get messy.
‘It can get pretty cloudy.’
Pure Ecstasy, however, reminded him what should come first.
‘My job, my one job with this thing that I have decided from out of the gate that I always f***ing tell everybody who comes on board whatever is like this is my project to let out exactly what I’m f***ing feeling.’
If commercial success follows, fine. If it does not, Shomo seems considerably less interested in bending himself around it.
‘I’ve learned to trust that the more I do that thing, the more I just let the truth out. It seems in history that those are always the best Beartooth records.’
And if things get difficult?
‘People can get other jobs if this thing f***ing falls apart.’
It sounds savage written down, but Shomo’s point is less nihilistic than it first appears. Jobs change. Careers move. The memories are the part that stays.
‘We’re gonna make so many f***ing core memories and and enjoy our time together.’
‘Jobs come and go, but like those memories are are f***ing everything.’
The priority now is simpler.
‘Not for monetary success, not for ticket sales, not for whatever, but for the f***ing joy, for the love of the game.’
‘I’m just a disciple of rocking’
Ask Shomo what his teenage self would make of his life now and he laughs at the impossibility of the question.
‘I have no idea, dude. No way that little undeveloped brain that was just trying to rock would be able to grasp any of this shit right now.’
Still, there is one part the kid who started joining bands at 13 or 14 would immediately understand.
‘I get to f***ing tour and play f***ing rock and make a living off it, I would hope he’d be stoked because that was his f***ing dream.’
Music has effectively been the only long-term plan.
‘I’m just a disciple of rocking, dude.’
‘That’s what my life is here for.’
That disciple is bringing the sermon back to Australia in January.
Beartooth are bringing ‘Pure Ecstasy’ to Australia
Beartooth’s Pure Ecstasy Australian tour will hit Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in January, with Fit For A King and Volumes joining the entire run, Shomo sounds particularly fired up about what is coming.
‘Oh, we’re gonna kick some ass on this next tour.’
‘We are prepared, and the set list rocks.’
His description gets considerably less delicate from there.
‘It is just hot and fast. It’s just a f***ing bloodbath, dude.’
Australia also comes with one unexpected possibility: golf.
Shomo grew up around the sport, with his father working as a golf coach and his brother also playing seriously.
‘I love to golf.’
During the pandemic, Shomo and his brother were playing roughly five times a week, though touring makes keeping that rhythm significantly harder, Australia might still provide a window.
‘I heard the weather is going to be nice. We’re going at a good time of year. We’re finally not coming in the middle of f***ing winter, which is really nice.’
Whether Shomo gets a round in remains to be seen, the rock part is considerably more certain.
After spending Pure Ecstasy stripping away fear, expectations and everything else obscuring what Beartooth was supposed to be, Shomo seems remarkably clear on the next step.
Make the record, get in the room, turn it up and then try to rock harder than last time.
Beartooth ‘Pure Ecstasy’ Australian Tour 2027
With Fit For A King and Volumes
Tuesday, January 26th – Adelaide, Thebarton Theatre
Thursday, January 28th – Melbourne, Festival Hall
Saturday, January 30th – Sydney, Hordern Pavilion
Sunday, January 31st – Brisbane, Fortitude Music Hall
Pick up your tickets here.
‘Pure Ecstasy’ Track List
- ‘Pure Ecstasy’
- ‘Eyes Closed’
- ‘Bullshit’
- ‘Beautiful Again’
- ‘Stadiums’
- ‘Free’
- ‘Sorry’
- ‘Lose You To Find Me’
- ‘You’
- ‘For Me By Me’
- ‘Made It’
Pure Ecstasy is out now via Fearless Records.
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