If there’s one thing that EKKSTACY wants his fans to know, it’s to forget everything. “Everything that I did before this [album] is trash, and they should forget about it,” he tells PAPER.
The Vancouver-born artist has never been one to sugarcoat things. At just 22, EKKSTACY has already carved out a distinct space for himself in the blurry overlap of post-punk revival, SoundCloud rap and lo-fi grunge-pop — but he’s done with being boxed in. With the release of FOREVER, his fourth full-length project, he’s shedding past aesthetics and doubling down on live instrumentation, raw emotion, and a sound he describes as “more explosive.” He’s tired of the programmed drums. Tired of lo-fi guitar tones. Tired of limitations. “I hit a wall,” he says. “Now, there’s no ceiling.”
In our conversation, he’s refreshingly candid — about music, mental health, the pitfalls of partying, and yes, shitting the bed as a kid. It’s this unfiltered energy that makes him feel less like a press-trained indie star and more like the one kid at the party you end up talking to for hours on the back porch. He’ll riff on his love-hate relationship with the internet (he hates it), his gothic-rave-meets-skate-punk fanbase (“all types of motherfuckers”), and his surreal tattoo experiences in ketamine-filled Paris apartments. Yet despite the chaos and candor, there’s a calm precision to his vision. FOREVER is both a statement and a launchpad — a marker of who he is and who he might become.
There’s also a surprising softness under all the edge. Songs like “keep my head down” tap into a vulnerable core that feels markedly different from his earlier work. “I have all these friends, but there’s so much of me I don’t show,” he sings on the track. It’s not just the sonic shift that makes this album feel new — it’s the perspective. He’s clear-eyed. Focused. (Mostly) sober. And with Germany already eating up his latest tour dates and his own weird little legion of misfit fans growing by the day, EKKSTACY seems poised to become something bigger than the underground.
Below, EKKSTACY talks about ghosts, Germany, getting clean and why he feels best when he’s just skating with his friends.
Where are you?
I’m in Vancouver, going to the skate park.
Whenever I think of Vancouver, I think of Nardwuar.
Yep, Nardwuar is around. He’s around town. You know, he works for the FBI.
Have you ever met him? Or do you want to be interviewed by him?
I’d do it. It’d be weird, but I’d do it. I’ve never met him, though. I’ve never seen him either.
I met him once at South by Southwest. He’s like an alien.
Yeah, he’s fucking insane. Who knows how he does it, bro?
Well, congrats on your new album.
Thanks, man. I’m stoked on it.
Why the name FOREVER?
I think it just fit in with the other ones really well. I wanted it to be a definitive name.
Yeah, because your last one was self-titled.
It was NEGATIVE, misery, EKKSTACY, and then FOREVER. I just thought that worked perfectly. I wanted to name it DESTROY, but I didn’t want it to be like Destroy Lonely. I couldn’t name it DESTROY. It was kind of too close to Sex Pistols, because their shit was like, ‘Destroy.’
I really like the song, “keep my head down.” I feel like it’s you being more vulnerable than you’ve ever been. I mean, we kind of know each other. I don’t know what album cycle that was when we met, but that was in 2022 or something.
It was a while ago. I feel like I’ve seen you since then, though.
How do you think you’ve evolved since then?
I was moving away from the computer rock stuff and moving more into the full band sound. I fell out of love with the programmed drums and the lo-fi guitars. I wanted it to be a more big sound, a more explosive sound. Just because playing with the band for so long, I got sick of all the fake drums and shitty guitar tones. I was like, bro, I want to just make a real rock record.
Yeah.
But also, I think my next album is going to be better. This one’s great, and I love it. But it was an introduction to how things can be. I felt like I had hit a ceiling with the sound I had before. I definitely hit a ceiling. But now there’s no ceiling again, and I can just work hard and make cool shit again, because I felt like I was at a fucking wall for so long with the last shit.
Why do you feel like you had hit a wall?
I feel like I just said everything I needed to say on that sound and just beat the fuck out of that sound. Too much.
What’s the demographic of your fans?
It’s all types of fools. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but I’ve noticed that there’s not a certain type of fool that goes to one of my shows. There’s goth fools, indie fools, just fools that look completely normal. Boys, girls, older people, really young people. It’s all types of motherfuckers, which is cool and weird, I guess. But it’s cool. I remember at this one show, this girl was there with her fucking dad, and she had to be, like, 12. She was like, “Oh my God,” fanboying over me like I was fucking in One Direction or some shit. Then there are fools that are old punk dudes that are like, “Man, you fucking make me feel like I’m fucking 20 again. I fucking love you.” Like, fuck yeah, dude.
What’s your relationship to attention and fame and fans? Do you like to talk to your fans?
I don’t really do internet shit. I should. But internet shit, I don’t like it. I don’t interact, and I get in trouble for it because motherfuckers are like, “Bro, you need to fucking interact with your fans.” Why? What am I gonna say? “Thanks, man, thanks for listening. Thank you.” I don’t know. I like to talk to them at the shows, though. That’s way different. At the shows, I’ll stay afterwards and talk and sign bullshit for hours, but on my phone, I’d rather not look at Instagram. I feel super regular. I do regular shit all the time. I’m regular as fuck. Just hang out with my friends and get fucking hammered, go to the skate park. I have my car. I think the only time I feel famous is when I’m in Germany.
Why Germany?
Because I’m just bigger over there than I am in North America.
That’s interesting. I wonder why?
No idea. I think that my type of music is just popular over there. So it just worked out. The shows there sell out, and they’re big. The kids are insane.
Don’t you have a tattoo that’s in German? Or is it Russian?
I have a Russian one. I have a German one too. I have a Russian one on my chest that says ‘Love,’ and then I have one on my hand that says ‘Ausgang.’ That means ‘exit.’ That’s German.
What’s your craziest tattoo experience?
One that comes to mind was when me and my guitarist were in Paris, and we met these two fools. I knew them on gram, and we pulled up to their crib at midnight or some shit. We pull up to this dungeon ass house, like a tiny fucking studio apartment in Paris. It’s late as fuck. We don’t know where the fuck we are. Both of our phones are almost dead. We pull up on these fools and they’re scary fools. Like, you know when you just know that someone’s just really fucked up and, really addicted to ketamine. You know, those types of Euro people.
So they’re both fucking straight ketamine addicts, skinny fucking scary fools. So it’s the middle of the night, and we’re like, “Fuck alright, whatever. Let’s do it.” So we go up to their apartment. It’s fucking scary in there. It smells like shit, fucking shit everywhere. Fucking dudes are in there shooting ketamine. And we’re like, “All right, man, let’s just get these tats over with.” Because I’m not really into drugs. I mean, at that point I wasn’t. So I’m getting this tattoo right by my dick. He’s all up in my shit, and I’m just dead sober. I’m just like, fuck dude, get me the fuck out of here, bro. Fuck. They barely spoke English, but then we ended up talking, and they were actually hella funny. We ended up staying for the whole night and got so many tats. They ended up being really cool. But yeah, the dude shooting K in his crib, it was gnarly watching that. Because the dude was telling us that he worked at a safe using center in Paris, and then he just goes straight to shooting K in his house. And we’re like, “Yep, cool.” But it was fun. There’s been a lot of crazy tats. One time I was on Xanax and ketamine getting my hand tatted, and I was in a whole other fucking realm of existence. I did not know what the fuck was going on. I couldn’t even feel my hand, and it should have really hurt. We were deep in Germany somewhere, I didn’t even know.
Why do you think people get tattoos?
I don’t know. I got tats because I thought they looked cool and I wanted to cover my body. I think it’s a feeling ugly thing, to be honest. I don’t know if it’s a good addition to anyone, whether you’re fucking busted or not. You can’t go wrong with tats, you know? I always thought they were sick. The dudes I thought were cool when I was growing up, all were tatted up. So I was just like, “Fuck it.”
What’s your ritual before playing a show?
I have a strong ritual. It has never changed. Well, honestly, it has changed, but the OG ritual was pull up, sound check, and then get as drunk as possible. Get to the point where you’re close to blacking out, but you’re still there, so you don’t do anything stupid. Then play the show, and then stay at the show for a couple hours until everyone’s gone, and then go party. And then wake up and do it again. It got bad because I was drinking too much. And then I started blacking out at shows and doing stupid shit. Then I started getting into drugs in Germany. It was pretty gnarly. Then that transferred into my normal life, which was bad for a bit, but then I got clean.
Was this recent? You got clean?
Yeah. The funny thing is, I didn’t even get addicted to the hard shit. I got really addicted to Xanax and Klonopin. I’d do coke and K, blah, blah, blah, and then I’d do Xanax in the morning because I’d get so anxious from the come down. I just got super addicted to the fucking pills. But I knocked it. It took a few weeks, but I got.
Do you have any ghost stories?
Yeah, one time me and my homies were in a graveyard. Typical, but this is real, bro. This happened. We were at a graveyard, me and three of my homies, and we’re just walking around. All of us are sober. We were 16. Then at the same time, we all look over to the right, maybe 40 feet away, and we see a dark figure behind a fucking tombstone. It looked like it was walking down this flight of stairs, away from us. Then we all just ran away. We all saw it. We were all there. It made no sense. We sat in the car after being like, “What was that?”
What’s your earliest memory?
I have a really deep memory of me shitting my bed when I was a kid. It was the classic meme where I went into my parents room and was like, “I shit myself.” I have a really old memory of me flying remote-controlled airplanes with my grandpa at his house. That was fun. But yeah, the shit one has to be really old, because I was living in downtown Vancouver with my parents when I was really fucking young, like two or three or some shit. That’s the house I remember doing the shit in.
If there was a lyric from this new album that a fan of yours would get tattooed, what lyric do you think it would be?
I’ve seen a lot of people get “I walk this earth all by myself” tattooed, but from the new album, probably “keep my head down.”
What do you have to say to your fans in general about this new era?
I just want everyone to know that it’s the beginning of a lot of cool shit that I’m about to do. Everything I did before this is just trash, and they should forget about it. The new shit is about to be fresh, and I want them to also know that I shit myself a lot when I was a kid.
Usually it’s peeing in the bed, but not shitting the bed.
No, no. I was ripping butt in the bed, dude. I remember one time my sister shit herself in her car seat. That was a really early memory, and that was the funniest thing that has ever happened. You being five years old and your baby sister just starts pooing herself. What’s funnier than that?
I do not have those memories. I don’t know why.
Do you have siblings?
Yeah. Maybe that’s a Canadian thing.
[Laughs] That was the funniest thing. But yeah, I don’t know. I put a lot into this one, way more than the last one. So I hope people can listen from the top to the bottom and really take it in.
Thanks for chatting with me.
Have a good one, bro. Thank you. This was a good one. I liked it.
Photography: Michael Donovan