“I had to really f*cking suffer for a while”: How EKKSTACY found his forever after

EKKSTACY is nursing a raging hangover. In the middle of answering a question about his upcoming third album FOREVER, the artist born Khyree Zienty (who goes by Stacy) takes a sharp pause.

“Dude, I actually feel like I got hit by a bus last night,” he jokes. “Swimming helps me with hangovers, but it’s pretty cold outside,” he considers, when asked how he’ll be recovering for the rest of the day.

As he speaks to Kerrang! from his Vancouver home, we’re greeted by an image of the neck of his 1951 Fender Telecaster, which he’s been jamming on all morning. Although the release of FOREVER is imminent, Stacy’s adventurous, impulsive mind is elsewhere – and has been for some time.

“Honestly, I’m not even thinking about [the album],” he admits. “I stop thinking about it once I’m done making it… if it was up to me, it would come out the fucking day that it was finished.”

When EKKSTACY wakes up in the morning – even with a sore head – playing music is the first thing on his mind. But this inherent desire to create has not always come easily.

“My [2024] self-titled album was fucking torture to make,” he admits. “I fucking hated it.” Writing FOREVER in the familiar comfort of his own four walls, he reshaped songwriting into something that could be focused, away from the chaos and party lifestyle of tour.

“It was all a moment in time that I had at the house, getting everything out,” he reflects. “I was really there – in the moment. It was an emotional time for me. I felt it. I miss that shit.”

Living in the present has been something EKKSTACY has struggled with, or “a flaw of mine,” as he puts it. Despite the spontaneous, forward-thinking individual that might come across on the surface, he admits he can only process certain things once they’re in the rearview mirror. For example, last summer’s goliath U.S. stadium shows with blink-182.

“After a little bit of time went by, I [realised] that was the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “The way my brain works, I kind of ruin things by overthinking, anxiety. Watching blink was crazy, but it was way too surreal to understand while I was doing it.”

When we first met EKKSTACY in 2022, he told us you should be proud of wearing your influences on your sleeve. Alongside blink-182, he lists off – unprompted – Knuckle Puck, Joyce Manor, Joy Division and my bloody valentine as his core inspirations for FOREVER. But the “out-of-body” eureka moment for the record’s mushy, hazy sound lies with the time his friend played him a song by fellow Vancouver post-punks Japandroids.

“Their shit makes me feel something that other bands don’t make me feel, even bands that I listen to more,” he remarks, with a spring in his step. “Japandroids give me this fucking visceral feeling. They're like, ‘Let’s fucking go out and party, let’s get hammered and let’s get depressed.’ It’s perfect. They’re the best band ever.”

FOREVER unashamedly channels that spirit, from the urgency of his cry for somebody to lean on (‘To rest my head / Calm my heart down’) during shoulders, or the stark lyrics to sadness, where he lists off thoughts like an anxious antithesis to QOTSA’s Feel Good Hit Of the Summer.

It’s also the first album EKKSTACY has recorded with a live band, a “fresher” shift that he will be replicating in the future. “I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time!” he sighs. “The lo-fi indie shit, it’s fucking boring. I’ve moved on to different shit. I was like, ‘I gotta fucking start playing with real drums and real guitars.’”

For a man who once broke out with a song that proclaimed, ‘I walk this earth all by myself,’ does letting more people into the EKKSTACY creative process suggest that his world is expanding? Does he feel that, three albums in, this project is bigger than his individual self?

“I’m not sure,” he answers, candidly. “I know that I mean something to some people, but I don’t feel like some fucking superstar at all. Definitely not. I feel normal… I’m not a big artist. But touring reminds me that I’m doing something that matters.”

Like his relationship with writing, being on the road has felt like a complex world for EKKSTACY to navigate. To this day, he remarks how “I have to tour” this month, when we ask what’s stopping him from cracking on with the fourth album that he seems so eager to write.

Nevertheless, it’s something he’s grown to gradually embrace, having been open in the past about drinking heavily to cope with pre-show anxiety. Is that still something he’s working on?

“I have no fear of performing now,” Stacy declares. “I had to put in a lot of work for it to be fun, because three years ago, touring was the bane of my existence… I had to really fucking suffer for a while.

“I had to chill out on the drinking, because I had one tour where I was really fucking falling apart,” he continues. “Blacking out at shows, fucking forgetting all my lyrics and slurring my words onstage. It was a really scary thing… I’m honestly really lucky that I never did anything really bad. I fucking have an angel watching me, dude.”

With FOREVER about to reveal its colours to the world, EKKSTACY’s focus is already 10 steps ahead. At the same time, he allows himself to be caught off guard, and follow his gut instinct as best as he can.

“I’m the most spontaneous motherfucker. I have no responsibilities when I’m not touring. I have literally nothing to do, I’m just sitting around. That’s when I end up at the club on Tuesday night…”

But after this conversation, you’d put your house on the fact that he’s picking that Telecaster straight back up, seeing what new chord shapes he can muster up.

“I have a new sound that I’m gonna do,” he grins. “Drop D sounds cool, bro!”

EKKSTACY’s new album FOREVER is due out May 16

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