Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Planting Your Roots With BEN BARLOW From NECK DEEP

Transcript

Planting Your Roots With BEN BARLOW From NECK DEEP · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  You know, we will be liked this. It won't be liked this unkist
• 0:10
  to start the loneliness some sicking enger. So my name is Ben I Singing
• 0:23
  neck Geek, and yeah we're a pop punk band from North Wales. And
• 0:29
  yeah we've been going for about twelve years. We're I'd say, I don't
• 0:33
  know, maybe maybe one of the only UK pop punk bands to do being
• 0:39
  able to be touring the world and still be around ten years later. And
• 0:43
  we're very pleased to be here. So yeah, just got a new album
• 0:46
  on the way on January the nineteenth, and it's a ripper, So very
• 0:51
  stoked for people to hear it, you know, for my thanks for joiningists
• 0:55
  that I've ben, no worries, thank you for having me my pleasure so
• 0:59
  to say. Next, Dave, I'm planning to drop your new self titled
• 1:02
  album on generally the ninety eighth. So what's this period like for you?
• 1:04
  May like you get nervous and anxious, you sort of put us your baby,
• 1:08
  don't worry about it, Like what sort of things goes on? I
• 1:15
  don't know. Yeah, it's a little nerve wracking in the sense of like,
• 1:18
  you know, you finish a record and you put it out to the
• 1:21
  world and then whatever people think of it is whatever people think of it.
• 1:25
  You know, we always we always love what we do, and we always
• 1:27
  kind of write for us. But yeah, it's kind of nerve racking thinking
• 1:30
  that, you know, the thing you work so hard on and the thing
• 1:34
  that you know you kind of poured your heart and soul into is going to
• 1:36
  be either loved or loathed by people. But I think people are going to
• 1:40
  love it, you know. I think it's a little bit of a a
• 1:44
  return to our roots in a lot of ways, and so, you know,
• 1:49
  I think friends are going to love that. But we still managed to
• 1:52
  keep it fresh, keep you know, have a new element of the sound
• 1:55
  in there, maybe just overall a little tighter and a little slicker. So
• 2:00
  yeah, I think, yeah, I'm not I'm not too nervous. I
• 2:02
  think fans are gonna so yeah, I know it's it's it's chilling. I'm
• 2:13
  not too not too nervous about it. We've got some big shows coming up
• 2:15
  that I'm more like, well, you know that I'm more nervous about.
• 2:20
  It's It's weird these days, how you know, you put out a record
• 2:23
  to support touring rather than the other way around. So yeah, you know,
• 2:29
  we've got we've got our biggest headline show ever coming up in the UK,
• 2:31
  and that's my goal. I'm just like fully set on that. I'm
• 2:35
  just like I want to sell that out. Like I know, people all
• 2:37
  love the record, and the record will do well and we're gonna have fun
• 2:39
  playing it. But like, yeah, to me, I want to see
• 2:44
  ten thousand people screaming the words back at me. And yeah, yeah,
• 2:47
  a few things to look forward to, he thinks to be nervous about,
• 2:51
  but good nerves. Good nerves generally awesome. So into the album for musically,
• 2:57
  like, give us a bit of an insight musical, what you're gone
• 3:00
  for? Well, yeah, I mean, you know, we're a pop
• 3:05
  punk round. We started off very much as a pop punk man, and
• 3:07
  obviously as the years have gone on, you know, we've we've we've pushed
• 3:12
  it and kind of dipped our toes in in a few different genres and tried
• 3:15
  different things. And I think it's now at a point where I don't know,
• 3:21
  maybe we got a little tired of right and pop punk at a point,
• 3:23
  and now I feel like we're just super stoked to right, just like
• 3:28
  straight up pop punk in your face, short, sharp to the point,
• 3:31
  and a little bit sad, a little bit angry, you know, just
• 3:36
  just you know, hitting on all the classic things that I think fans love
• 3:38
  about us. I think it's very relatable. It's talking about you know,
• 3:44
  every day, every day problems and hopefully could could help or at least you
• 3:47
  know, be a little arm around the shoulder for people listening to it.
• 3:52
  I think there's always an element of nostalgia with pop punk. It's, you
• 3:55
  know, whether you like it or not. I think that's kind of an
• 3:58
  element of white people like the genre, and so there's a little nostalgia in
• 4:03
  there. I think people will hear little callbacks and sort of sonic signatures of
• 4:09
  their favorite pop punk bands from the early two thousands. That's when we grew
• 4:12
  up and that's what we loved about it. So yeah, it's just short,
• 4:15
  sharp, to the point, in your face, lean, maybe a
• 4:19
  bit more on the punk side of things rather than the pop side of things.
• 4:25
  And yeah, if you like, you know, energetic music, that
• 4:30
  can you know, be a little bit of a guide to life or you
• 4:33
  know, maybe just like I said, like an arm around the shoulder,
• 4:36
  then that's what that's what we're all about, I think, is helping people
• 4:42
  navigate this crazy world through crazy music. Really, So today brit you release
• 4:49
  the singles it might be on This Forever, take Me with You, Heartbreak
• 4:53
  of the Century, and we need more Bricks. So would you say over
• 4:57
  all those four songs are a good sign representation of what we expect. Yeah,
• 5:00
  definitely, I think, you know, especially with I think Heartbreak and
• 5:08
  Take Me with You and Bricks, like you know, they're very much like
• 5:13
  that core pop punk sound that we were going for, and I think that's
• 5:15
  very representative of the album. But then we're also known for like the more
• 5:19
  like kind of mid tempoly ballady kind of songs, which I think it won't
• 5:26
  be like This Forever is kind of more in that vein. There's still a
• 5:30
  few other vibes on the record, but you know, people here when the
• 5:32
  when the record, when the four things out. But as a whole,
• 5:34
  i'd say, yeah, pretty representative. Like I said, I think we've
• 5:39
  leant more on the pop punk side of things with this record. You know,
• 5:43
  there's no acoustic songs or anything like that. And yeah, and you
• 5:46
  know, but from from what I think fans have been saying so far,
• 5:50
  because you know, we're paranoid. So we read all the comments and yeah,
• 5:56
  people people seem to be like in the new direction and say new direction
• 6:00
  sort of like the you know, as kind of going back to our roots
• 6:03
  a little bit. And so yeah, if you like what you've heard from
• 6:06
  the singles, I think you're gonna love the records. There's a whole bunch
• 6:10
  of other stuff. It's just like that on there and then a few other
• 6:12
  different things too. So on that point, like you mentioned this a couple
• 6:16
  of times about returning to your roots, so he explained a bit more much
• 6:20
  you mean by that like is it writing style? Is it the music?
• 6:24
  Is it? What's what? Way? Kind of both really, because the
• 6:30
  way the band started was we started in my brother's bedroom. Who's my brother,
• 6:35
  said, who plays bass for us? We're started in his bedroom because
• 6:40
  he used to record us and you know, help us write and stuff.
• 6:43
  And the way that we made this record was we did it all ourselves.
• 6:47
  So we have a studio like just down the road from where we live,
• 6:51
  and halfway through making the record, we were we were out in l A
• 6:57
  doing stuff and it wasn't going the way that we we wanted it to,
• 7:00
  and it wasn't sounding the way we wanted it to sound, and so we
• 7:02
  had to make the kind of brutal decision to pivot and said, right,
• 7:06
  well, no one knows it's better than we know ourselves. You know.
• 7:11
  It's it's it's kind of hard to explain conceptually to people what we're trying to
• 7:15
  go for when we just kind of have this inherent knowledge and this inherent like
• 7:19
  belief in what we were going for. So yeah, decided to take it
• 7:24
  back to roots and do it all ourselves, you know, with my brother
• 7:27
  at the helm and then it's all kind of picking away at the songs behind
• 7:30
  him, and so that in itself, you know, just the process of
• 7:33
  making the record was much more you know, much more natural for us.
• 7:39
  You know, we weren't we weren't far from home, we weren't kind of
• 7:44
  having to compromise with anyone like we could. Just it was totally on us.
• 7:47
  So and that felt great. You know, I think we've we've come
• 7:53
  a long way since we were teenagers writing songs in a bedroom, and so,
• 7:58
  you know, it's it's kind of going back to that old format,
• 8:01
  but with all of the knowledge and experience that we've picked up over the years
• 8:05
  and applying it that way so and as well with the sound just sonically,
• 8:11
  Like like I said, you know, we've we've kind of dipped our toes
• 8:13
  and a few other genres and we've we've we've experimented a little bit, and
• 8:20
  I think it just felt right. And we kind of wanted to write a
• 8:22
  pop punk record, you know, I think with our last record, and
• 8:26
  it was a bit more expansive, and but we weren't really trying to write
• 8:31
  a pop punk record. We were kind of just on a different different wave
• 8:35
  at the time, and I think post pandemic and you know, having life
• 8:39
  put in perspective for us a little bit, we were just like, let's
• 8:41
  just do what we're good at, Let's do what people love us for.
• 8:43
  Let's do the thing that we we kind of grew up wanting to do.
• 8:48
  And that's just right, you know, fast energetic, kind of like in
• 8:54
  a way, kind of emo adjacent, harcre adjacent pop punk really, so
• 9:00
  yeah, just just just simplifying it really, you know, and it felt
• 9:03
  good to do that. It felt right. It felt like, you know,
• 9:07
  this is the kind of music that we should be making. And I
• 9:11
  know, yeah, it just came came really naturally, came really easily.
• 9:13
  So yeah, in a few different ways. It's it feels like it's coming
• 9:18
  back to you know, how and how it started and and kind of tapping
• 9:24
  into why we started the band, and ultimately that was just to write good
• 9:26
  music that we love and to hopefully be able to play that live to people.
• 9:31
  Really, so yeah, just simple, simplifying, simplifying and yeah sure,
• 9:39
  And also part of that, going back to back to sort of Roci
• 9:41
  Price show, was you made the album with your own warehouse, which wasn't
• 9:45
  far from your old stopping grounds, Like how did creating in that environment sort
• 9:50
  of affect the overall process and never all sound of it? Yeah, yeah,
• 9:54
  I mean it's for us. We found it massive. We've better official,
• 10:00
  you know, like I said, we were we were out doing there
• 10:03
  playing the game out in LA and you know, doing the you know whole
• 10:09
  working with producers and this and that, and it was kind of at a
• 10:13
  point where we were like we couldn't express how we were feeling. You know,
• 10:16
  there was a there was a kind of discord there and we couldn't really
• 10:20
  like, yeah, we couldn't really communicate how we how we felt about the
• 10:26
  music. It was tough. You know, we found ourselves kind of looking
• 10:28
  at each other in those sessions and kind of gritting our teeth or tying and
• 10:33
  kind of like it. So when we got into our own space and we
• 10:37
  had to we had to make no compromises, and you know, it just
• 10:41
  flowed immediately, just made it so much, so much easier. I think
• 10:46
  just you know, whether that's down to us having a better understand like you
• 10:52
  know, i'd say like the main songwriters of the band that are all pretty
• 10:54
  telepathic with how things, you know, with what we like, you know,
• 10:58
  we can kind of look at each other and be like, that's not
• 11:01
  it at all. But then when the thing, you know, when we
• 11:05
  find the thing, when we find the part, it's like everyone just immediately
• 11:07
  knows that's that's how it should be sounding. And I think as well,
• 11:11
  just an environmental thing as well. A lot of it, Like when we
• 11:13
  were in La it was like it wasn't like we were in the thick of
• 11:18
  Hollywood and we were living it up. We were like out in the fucking
• 11:20
  stick somewhere and it was like nothing around, like everything is expensive, Like
• 11:26
  the place we were staying wasn't that, Like hope, it was very like
• 11:31
  comfortable for us. And then just like when you're in the studio, you
• 11:33
  know, you're in someone else's space, you're living, you're kind of working
• 11:37
  to their schedule and their rules and like the way that they like to do
• 11:41
  things. And that's fine. You know, we've done that a million times
• 11:43
  and it's it's all well and good respect it. But like we just had
• 11:48
  this desire to we needed to do it our way, and we needed to
• 11:52
  be in a space that we felt more comfortable in. So being just down
• 11:54
  the road and just being able to do whatever we want, work as late
• 11:58
  as we want, take a break whenever we want, you know, have
• 12:01
  a few beers or whatever. Like then it's cool. Like you know,
• 12:05
  it just made it so much easier. There was there was less pressure on
• 12:07
  it. You know, we weren't on this like alloted time that we had
• 12:11
  to get stuff done. It was just it just opened it up a lot
• 12:13
  more and we could we could just relax a little bit and take a time
• 12:18
  with it, relaxed a little bit. Like obviously making a record is hard
• 12:22
  work, but we weren't. We weren't turnding on eggshells, you know,
• 12:24
  we were just much more comfortable, and that's super important making a record.
• 12:28
  You know, if if you're you're trying to write great songs, but you're
• 12:33
  also concerned about like I don't know, can I can I wear my shoes
• 12:37
  in this little area? Like yeah, it's like, yeah, it's weird.
• 12:43
  You know. We would We were just like we we wanted to we
• 12:46
  wanted to have fun doing what we were doing. And then I think l
• 12:48
  a kind of broke us a little bit. So I switched up the environment
• 12:52
  and as soon as we got in the studio at home, we were like,
• 12:54
  this is so much better, Like this is how we wanted things to
• 12:58
  sound, so paid off. In the end, they stood up. I
• 13:03
  think this is netgig spit the album mate. So what decided that this is
• 13:07
  the one worth giving you name too? Well? Yeah, I mean we
• 13:11
  I think it was. We had a lot of album titles floating around and
• 13:16
  there were a few that were like strong contenders, but I think when self
• 13:22
  titled was suggested, everyone just kind of was like, yeah, I mean,
• 13:26
  if there's ever a record to do it like it, maybe seems like
• 13:30
  this one. The fact that we you know, like we've said, is
• 13:33
  the fact that we did it all ourselves and the fact that it was kind
• 13:35
  of going back to our roots and it was all totally self sufficient with there's
• 13:41
  ever an albums of self title, it's this one, you know, and
• 13:45
  yeah, just just landed, I think when I can't remember who suggested it
• 13:48
  when we're in the studio, but everyone seems to be comfortable with it,
• 13:52
  and you know, you've got to have one with big Blink quantity two fans.
• 13:56
  So I think we've always had our eyes set on, like we should
• 13:58
  do a self title one day. A lot of peo cool. Yeah,
• 14:01
  So yeah, I think it was just easy. It felt right. It
• 14:03
  encapsulated what the record kind of felt like to us and what it was about,
• 14:09
  and it was about us kind of rediscovering ourselves a little bit. I
• 14:11
  think everything from post Pandemic to having to switch up halfway through making the record
• 14:20
  was a big period of like rediscovery for us, figuring out who we were,
• 14:22
  where we wanted to go, what people expected of us, and and
• 14:26
  what was kind of at the core of the band. And so yeah,
• 14:31
  it was a bit of a rediscovery and I think that justified the self title.
• 14:35
  Really. It's actually a big so I will be the only one in
• 14:39
  the world think so like this. But if I'm coming across a band that
• 14:41
  I haven't heard much of before and they've got a few albums, I'll always
• 14:45
  go to the stuff todted one because to me, the band mad their name
• 14:48
  to that, so to me, the band's really happy with that. So
• 14:50
  that's the one I'll go do. If I have to listen to one album,
• 14:54
  one might be the only one in the world does that. I think
• 14:58
  that's I think that's valid, you know, I think again, the one
• 15:01
  that always comes to mind for me is Blink Trnity two self titled, and
• 15:03
  like that is arguably their best album. You know, obviously everyone has their
• 15:07
  favorites, but arguably their best record, and it's the record maybe they were
• 15:11
  most proud of knowing of how they made it and stuff like that. Maybe
• 15:16
  again, it was similar for them, like the way that they made that
• 15:18
  record. It took them a long time. They struggled to get through it,
• 15:22
  but they stuck to their guns and did what they wanted to do,
• 15:24
  and maybe they felt like that was the blank quantity two they wanted to be.
• 15:28
  So yeah, makes sense, makes sense, And if that's the case,
• 15:31
  if anyone else thinks like that, then sick. They're gonna hear the
• 15:35
  what I think is the most the most true to neck deep record that we've
• 15:41
  made for a while. Yeah, awesome. So the album comes out on
• 15:46
  January the nine eighth, So what seems sort of nick deep after that?
• 15:50
  Actually you've got ship like yeah, a lot of touring. Yeah, so
• 15:54
  yeah, we had straight into a full US tour and then we've got like
• 16:00
  I would go to Japan with some forty one it will be rad and then
• 16:06
  yeah, then we got like our biggest ever UK like our biggest ever headliner
• 16:11
  coming up in the UK, which is in Alexandra Palace, which is usually
• 16:14
  where they played where they show the darts. But it's a sick yeah.
• 16:18
  Yeah, yeah, it's a sick venue though. It's like ten thousand people
• 16:22
  just flat, no seats, no nothing like that. So plenty of Mohan
• 16:25
  and plenty of crowdsurfing and plenty of fun. So yeah, it's gonna be
• 16:30
  pretty hectic obviously. You know, we're we're kind of sat twitching our thumbs
• 16:33
  just waiting for the record to come out and see what fans really think of
• 16:37
  it. But we're not really eye hopes everything, and I think things generally
• 16:41
  look like they're going well. So I don't know, we're just in a
• 16:45
  good place as a band at the minute as well. Like you know,
• 16:48
  everyone in the band is very content, and you know, we're all in
• 16:52
  a good place. There's no there's no there's no lingering band dude stuff like
• 16:57
  hanging around in the back. It's like every but he's on the same page
• 17:00
  and everybody's just determined to kind of kind of get it done. And you
• 17:06
  know, we're at that point in our career now where like we can we
• 17:10
  can sustain this for as long as we want. We can do this for
• 17:12
  the rest of our lives, whether we're playing to ten people or to ten
• 17:15
  thousand people. Like if we just keep doing what we're doing and we do
• 17:19
  this for us and write the songs that we want to write, and you
• 17:25
  know, stick to our guns, and I think we can do this for
• 17:29
  you know, as long as we want. Really, it's just a good
• 17:32
  period for the band and still to get back out on the road and just
• 17:34
  do what we do. Really, like we're not trying, like I said
• 17:37
  about simplifying things, like you know, maybe we've had to take a step
• 17:41
  back and say like hey, let's let's not keep trying to just be the
• 17:44
  biggest band in the world, because you know, when you're when you're nineteen
• 17:47
  and you're touring tour in the world, do you think like, oh,
• 17:49
  let's let's take this as far as we can, Like, oh, they're
• 17:52
  going to be We're going to be the biggest band in the world. They're
• 17:53
  like, you know, we've you know, come so so far and we're
• 17:57
  so blessed to be where we're at. So we're just trying to sustain that.
• 18:00
  And you know, whatever happened, whatever comes from, whatever comes of
• 18:04
  that, it's cool. Like whether we get whether we get even you know,
• 18:08
  whether whether we get bigger as a band, or whether we're just like
• 18:12
  if we're just chilling and you know this, this is us, Like we're
• 18:15
  just very content with where we're at as a band. And so as long
• 18:18
  as the shows are good and and and our fans like the music, like
• 18:22
  you know that, that's all that really matters to us. So we're in
• 18:26
  a good place, very happy at the mint. We're very nice to right
• 18:30
  j January nine eighth, And next time he's come to Australia, we're having
• 18:34
  a beer you know, liked it won't be liked long start, long from sicking Eng