Beartooth’s sixth album, Pure Ecstasy, finds Caleb Shomo arriving at a place that once seemed almost unimaginable: freedom. For more than a decade, Shomo has used Beartooth as an outlet for anger, depression, self-doubt and survival, turning some of his most painful experiences into massive, cathartic rock anthems. This time, the exposed nerve is still there, but the person behind it has changed.

Beartooth began in Shomo’s Ohio basement in 2013, where he wrote, produced and played every instrument on songs that combined hardcore aggression with huge melodic hooks. That intensely personal approach has remained at the center of the band ever since, carrying Beartooth from those early recordings to gold and platinum singles including “Hated” and “In Between.”

The transformation became especially apparent on 2023’s The Surface, an album that traded some of the darkness of earlier records for self-acceptance and possibility. It debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative and Hard Music charts, while “Might Love Myself” topped both the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay and Mediabase charts. “I Was Alive” followed as one of rock radio’s most-played songs of 2024.

Pure Ecstasy takes that evolution even further. The album marks Beartooth’s first release for Fearless Records and pairs Shomo with Jordan Fish, the former Bring Me The Horizon member whose production credits include Poppy and Architects. Working together pushed Shomo beyond some of his familiar instincts while preserving the immediacy and emotional honesty that have defined Beartooth from the beginning.

The result is a bigger, sharper version of the band, still capable of delivering the crushing guitars and explosive choruses fans expect, but fueled by a noticeably different emotional energy. Where earlier Beartooth albums often sounded like Shomo fighting his way through the worst moments of his life, Pure Ecstasy captures what happens when that fight finally begins to pay off.

It’s a significant new chapter for an artist whose personal growth has always been inseparable from his music. The pain hasn’t been erased, and Shomo hasn't lost the intensity that built Beartooth in the first place. But on Pure Ecstasy, he's finally able to turn that intensity toward something brighter.