Rock outfit Kutless is not the same band they were when they started in 2002.

The college-aged kids are gone. In their place stand husbands, daddies and introspective musicians. With their newest project, To Know That You’re Alive (BEC), the five Oregon natives prove that there’s more to their composition than just rock. They’re out to prove the heart behind the music, too.

Jon Micah Sumrall, lead singer of Kutless, personifies this metamorphosis with the tone of a man who has been through change and come out stronger on the other side.

“The title song came out of my personal experience. My recent shoulder injury inspired it, because I was like ‘God, why did You allow this to happen? I’m trying to tour, and I cannot move.’ I was really wrestling with it, and God showed me that ‘sometimes, I need to let you hurt, so you can appreciate what you have and turn you toward Me.' It’s easy to get so busy and lose our focus,” Sumrall continues. “Maybe we don’t have a relationship with God that is a part of our daily routine as much as it should be. So He lets us hurt, and we turn up the notch of our spirituality. Yeah, we do have to hurt and be uncomfortable. To know that you’re alive, you have to feel, and in order to feel, you have to feel both good and bad. You can’t take one or the other … They allow us to refocus back toward the Lord.”

The band has certainly seen its share of good and bad, mostly through a changing roster. The current lineup is Sumrall, Jeffrey Gilbert (drums), James Mead (guitars), Dave Luetkenhoelter (bass), and newest addition Nick DePartee (guitars). Sumrall says, “Ryan [Shrout] left the band about a year ago, and we had a guy who had filled in the year before, a good buddy of ours. It was funny, because he had already done some shows with us. Nick was a huge part of the songwriting process on this new record.”

The new record, Sumrall says, exemplifies the growth of the group by gearing toward a fresh sound and tackling issues like abuse alongside rejoicing. He says the band also “took a totally new approach to the record. We felt it was important to change things up. Every record until now, we have done in Seattle with Aaron Sprinkle. We used a different producer, and we recorded some in Portland and San Diego. We had the privilege to go to Abbey Road in London, and we recorded some strings over there.”

He laughs, “We recorded some on the road, and some in green rooms! So this record was created in a very different way than the previous ones. I think we definitely accomplished a fresh sound. I’d say Nick was part of that as well. A combination of everything allowed us to reinvent our sound a little bit and keep it interesting. I think some people love rock records, but I love records that have their moments—[records] that rock really hard and also have softer moments.” There are no “worship songs” on this album, but Sumrall asks, “What is a worship song? Any song that glorifies God, which we hope all our songs do.”