BEARTOOTH 'Pure Ecstacy'

BEARTOOTH
Pure Ecstacy
Fearless Records

There is a moment in the middle of the title track where Caleb Shomo says the pressure is building and he cannot take it anymore. Everything pulls back just long enough to make you feel it, and then BEARTOOTH drops that massive guitar riff straight back on your head. That moment might be the simplest way to explain Pure Ecstasy: pressure, release, self-reflection, another internal war, and a guitar riff big enough to carry all of it. When BEARTOOTH gets that combination right, there are still very few modern rock bands that do it better.

Pure Ecstasy feels like BEARTOOTH looking backward, inward and forward at the same time. There are pieces of nearly every era of the band spread throughout these eleven tracks. I hear the darkness of Below, the emotional evolution of The Surface, flashes of the aggression that built BEARTOOTH in the first place, and enough new ideas to make it clear that Caleb and company have no interest in standing still. Sometimes that experimentation works incredibly well. Other times, I think the band reaches so hard for something new that they step away from some of the things they already do exceptionally well.

And then there is “Stadiums.”
We will get there.

The personal circumstances surrounding Pure Ecstasy cannot be fully separated from the record. Caleb recently came out as a gay man and has spoken, openly, about understanding and accepting parts of himself he had suppressed for years. Caleb, brother... we know. Maybe we did not know know, but you have spent more than a decade standing in front of thousands of people ripping open every emotion you could find while half of us still answer “How are you doing?” with “I’m good” because actually talking about feelings sounds like too much work. There were clues. But whether anyone knew or did not know, ultimately changes nothing. We loved you before, and we love you now!

More importantly, that self-discovery clearly became another layer of the writing on Pure Ecstasy. Identity, freedom, anger, acceptance and the realization that sometimes the person standing in your way is the one staring back at you run throughout this record. That gives the album context, but it cannot be the entire review. This still has to work as a rock record. The guitars need to crush. The drums need to hit. The melodies need to stick. And after spending plenty of time with Pure Ecstasy, that is where my feelings get complicated.

The title track gets things started exactly how I want a BEARTOOTH album to start: with one hell of a guitar riff. Guitar has always been one of BEARTOOTH’s greatest weapons, and it is a major reason why songs like “The Last Riff” connect with me so much. “Pure Ecstasy” has that same physical weight. The melody is unmistakably BEARTOOTH, the guitars are huge, and that mid-song pressure-building moment turns the music itself into part of the release. Then Caleb delivers what may be my favorite line on the entire record: “I’m not the battle; I’m the fucking war.” It sums up much of what this album is wrestling with while also sounding fucking fantastic!

“Eyes Closed” follows and gives the album two bangers immediately. This song feels like several generations of BEARTOOTH meeting in the same room. I hear Below in it. I hear the melodic growth that came afterward. I hear the roots of the band. Longtime BEARTOOTH fans know exactly what I mean. Sometimes you do not need a technical explanation; you hear something and immediately think, “Yep, that is BEARTOOTH!” The melody works, the riffs hit hard, and the middle section built around forgiveness, heaven and death, is one of the strongest moments on the record.

“Bullshit” keeps the momentum moving, although it sits slightly below those opening tracks for me. The pinch harmonics are nasty, and the drums absolutely crush, especially the tom and kick work. There are a few sections where the momentum drops enough for me to notice, but that is admittedly me nitpicking a band I have listened to for years. “Bullshit” is still getting played. It just does not hit quite as hard as the first two tracks.

Then comes “Beautiful Again,” and this is where Pure Ecstasy really gets me!
This is my favorite song on the album.

BEARTOOTH is at its best when the riffs, melody and emotional weight all feel like they came from the same place, and “Beautiful Again” does exactly that! Caleb has always had an ability to write about something deeply personal while leaving enough room for listeners to place their own lives inside the song. The idea that hate cannot fix a broken heart landed hard with me. I do not want to spend my life beating myself up or struggling to find something worthwhile when I look inward. I want to feel beautiful again too. Caleb may be writing his story, but the best BEARTOOTH songs have a way of making you believe, for a few minutes, that he somehow wrote them for you.

Then we hit “Stadiums.”
What in the actual fuck happened?!

I have listened to it repeatedly. I have tried to find the angle that makes it click. It just does nothing for me. If “Stadiums” becomes your favorite song on the record, good. That is how music works. Once a song reaches you, it belongs to you. But I own the records, wear the shirts, hang BEARTOOTH shit on my walls and go to the shows. I am firmly on the home team, and even I cannot defend this one.
Take that shit off the album!

“Free” gets things moving in the right direction again, although following “Stadiums” was not exactly an impossible assignment. Musically, there is plenty I like. The guitars still have weight, and I understand exactly where the song fits into the album’s themes of freedom, honesty and self-acceptance. My disconnect is with the lyrical structure and vocal melody. I respect what “Free” is trying to communicate more than I enjoy the finished song. Those are two different things, and it lands somewhere in the middle for me.

“Sorry” stays in that same territory. There are good riffs, some electronic elements that add texture and an extremely well-placed “fuck you” near the end.
Never underestimate a properly placed “fuck you!”

There is also a repetitive drum fill around the middle that starts pulling my attention away from the rest of the song. Ultimately, “Sorry” feels like a traditional album track. I will hear it when I listen to Pure Ecstasy front-to-back, but I cannot imagine myself regularly searching it out afterward. It is not bad. It just does not leave much behind when it is over. Sorry… Not Sorry.

Then “Lose You to Find Me” brings me right back.

This one sits beside “Beautiful Again” as one of the strongest songs on the album. The guitars, drums, melody and emotion finally move together again, and Caleb returns to the kind of writing that starts as his confession and somehow ends up carrying some of your own weight. You can hear this song when you are carrying more than you know how to explain, and somehow that weight feels understood. Not fixed. Not gone. Just understood. Sometimes that is enough. “Beautiful Again” still owns my number-one spot, but “Lose You to Find Me” is right behind it.

Then comes “You,” and somebody apparently decided the album needed a little more violence! The stripped-down opening immediately reminded me of REN. I am not claiming direct influence, but there is something about the exposed acoustic approach that made the connection in my head. I could almost picture Caleb hearing something like that and saying, “Hold my mental health real quick.”

Then the song fucking explodes!

Once “You” opens up, you could drop this track onto Below and I am convinced nobody would question it. That is a huge compliment. Below is one of those records I can play from beginning to end and immediately start again, and “You” carries that same aggression and rock-and-roll attitude. Then the ending strips everything back down before Caleb delivers that final guttural “it’s time to fucking die.”

Beautiful. Disgusting. Perfect!
Play this fucking song live.

“For Me, By Me” is another track where I respect the experiment more than I enjoy the result. The guitar work remains excellent, which may be the most consistent strength of Pure Ecstasy, but Caleb’s vocal approach does not completely work for me. I understand the need to grow. If BEARTOOTH spent the next twenty years trying to rewrite Disease, eventually even I would complain, and Disease is my favorite BEARTOOTH record. Bands need to take chances. But experimentation does not automatically equal success. “For Me, By Me” is a good song with an interesting idea; it is simply not one I expect to revisit often.

Then we reach “I Made It.”
Hello, TOP 40, BEARTOOTH.

Before anyone starts sharpening the pitchforks, I understand exactly why this song exists. It is built for a massive crowd. I can already picture 10,000 people singing it back while Caleb works the stage like some heavily tattooed emotional choir conductor. This is his victory lap, his moment of saying, “I survived this shit and I am still standing.” There are people who are going to need this song, and I fully expect it to become massive live.
I hope radio grabs it. I hope it brings more people into BEARTOOTH’s world. I may even love it when I hear thousands of people singing it live.

I just probably will not listen to it very often on my own.

There is enough BEARTOOTH DNA to identify the band, but it leans farther away from the rock and roll I personally come here for. That does not make “I Made It” bad. It simply means I can recognize that a song accomplishes what it was built to do without needing it for myself. In many ways, that is my relationship with Pure Ecstasy as a whole.

This is a good album, and at times it is a fucking great one. “Beautiful Again,” “Lose You to Find Me,” “Eyes Closed,” “Pure Ecstasy” and “You” remind me exactly why BEARTOOTH has occupied so much space in my musical life! The riffs remain crushing, the drums hit hard, and Caleb can still scream like there is something inside him that needs to get out before turning around and delivering a melody built for thousands of voices.

But there are also moments where I think BEARTOOTH becomes so focused on discovering what comes next that they temporarily forget how fucking good they already are at being BEARTOOTH! I do not want Disease II. I do not want Below II. I want the band to evolve, experiment and take risks. I just want that evolution to grow naturally from what they have already built instead of feeling different simply for the sake of being different.

Maybe that criticism lands harder because I am absolutely a BEARTOOTH fanboy. I have the vinyls. I have the shirts. I have the flags. I have a rare pressing of Disease. I have watched this band evolve and listened as Caleb wrote from some incredibly dark places; through sobriety, self-reflection, and now a different level of acceptance. I have also spent years telling people that if they have never seen BEARTOOTH live, they need to correct that mistake immediately.

That history is exactly why I cannot fake my reaction to Pure Ecstasy. Below ends and I can immediately hit play again. The Surface comes damn close. Disease remains untouchable for me. Pure Ecstasy has songs I expect to play for years and others I will probably allow to disappear into the catalog.

That surprised me.

I am also seriously considering asking my editor to send me to the Hollywood Palladium for the Pure Ecstasy World Tour, because seeing these songs live may finish this story for me. “You” could destroy a room. “I Made It” may make considerably more sense surrounded by thousands of voices. Even some of the tracks I am lukewarm on could become completely different animals once BEARTOOTH puts them through that live machine.

Because I will continue saying this until people get tired of hearing it: if you have never seen BEARTOOTH live, you are missing out. They are one of the best modern rock bands I have seen perform, sitting in the same category as Shinedown; where you walk through the doors knowing you are about to watch professionals tear a stage apart.

But being that good live, creates expectations and the records have to feed that machine. Pure Ecstasy has some exceptional moments, but it does not consistently reach the standard BEARTOOTH themselves taught me to expect.

Caleb, keep doing you! Keep figuring yourself out! Keep writing about the shit most people would rather hide from!! Keep turning your internal wars into songs that somehow become ours. We loved you before. We love you now. If Pure Ecstasy is the record you needed to make to become more comfortable with the person looking back at you, then make the fucking record!
I do not have to love every song to respect what it represents.

And Pure Ecstasy not becoming one of my favorite BEARTOOTH albums does not change the fact that BEARTOOTH remains one of my favorite bands.

Sometimes loving a band means being willing to say when they missed.
And sometimes, five minutes later, it means screaming, “I’m not the battle, I’m the fucking war.”

Both things can be true.

3.5 Out Of 5.0

P.S. To Caleb and the rest of BEARTOOTH: if I make it out to the Hollywood Palladium, I am absolutely bringing that Disease vinyl with me. I have carried that record like a prized possession for years, so consider this my completely shameless public request to get that thing signed. I promise not to make it weird.
Probably.