After the critical success of his eponymous album in 2024, EKKSTACY made a radical choice: to flee. He headed for Vancouver, his hometown, far from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, where he had settled. A detour via New York? ‘Horrible, miserable’, he says. So he went home to his parents’ house.

‘Living here sucks,’ he says, somewhere between fatalism and resignation. ‘But it’s comfortable.’

It must be said that British Columbia has become his refuge after a destructive European spiral. The 2024 tour? A series of sleepless nights, excess and misadventures. ‘Lots of drugs, lots of alcohol. Psychosis’, he admits bluntly. Yet the teenager he was had promised himself that he would never touch that again, after a bad experience that had landed him in hospital. But Europe made him let his guard down: ‘I told myself that everything was safe here.’ Bad calculation. Back in the United States, he continued on his way until an encounter stopped him in his tracks. ‘I was partying really, really, really hard… then I met this girl. That’s when I told myself that I had to stop.’

End of the game. New start.

Sober and focused, he composed Forever, his fourth album. A rebirth. Exit the past obsessions, farewell to the ghosts of exes, no more laments about ‘the Bellas’. Make way for something more raw, more visceral. ‘I stopped loving indie and started loving emo,” he confesses, citing Japandroids and Remo Drive as new influences. The result: sharper guitars and more instinctive vocals.

Another revolution: his working method. Before, he would lay his vocals on top of already finished instrumentals, as a spectator. On Forever, he does everything on the guitar, live. A game-changer. ‘Before, I just sang along. Now, everything is thought out at the same time. It’s silly, but it’s new for me,’ he laughs, half amused, half fascinated by his own discovery.

The result is a more coherent, more tense record. The opening track is bursting with pop-punk energy, an unabashed nod to Japandroids. ‘Seventeen’ and ‘Wonder’ calm things down with stripped-down ballads, while ‘She Will Be Missed’ is a rollercoaster ride between fragile whispers and raw screams. ‘I just tried to sing as loud as I could,’ he admits. And it shows.

No features. No frills. Just EKKSTACY, alone at the helm, sure of himself. Forever sounds like an affirmation: more adult, more honed, more sincere. ‘It’s the best album I’ve ever made,’ he says bluntly. ‘And for the first time in a long time, I want to play it for my friends.’