Neck Deep
Album by Neck Deep
Released 19 January 2024
Pop Punk
Label – Hopeless
Rating – 5/10
Neck Deep’s self-titled, quite simply, flaunts the band’s love of pop punk and emo.
–
I’ve often wondered if Neck Deep exists simply to keep a sound alive, or better yet, to keep an era alive. Even in their Life’s Not Out to Get You days, the Wrexham band have been happy to stew in the aromas of 2000s pop punk, a little heavier here-and-there to touch up their hardcore influences – namely A Day to Remember – and since listening to No Pressure in 2022, I’ve regularly felt that no matter how good the music might be, a pop punk quota exists.
This formula continues into Neck Deep’s self-titled album. The album comes up with ways to gift songs those little extra stings that may have allowed Neck Deep to be not just another pop punk band should they have existed twenty years ago, but indeed they are little.
Emo tinges create earworms like This Is All My Fault in the form of a black eyeliner-smeared opening of “BEFORE WE JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS”. It’s one of the songs in which Ben Barlow up his classic winy emo guy voice, another example being the manner in which he stresses certain words on Go Outside, similarly to how Tom Delonge might.
Some songs will take on both extremities of emo power pop, aggressively with skilled drumming on Sort Yourself Out, quietly and then aggressively (slightly) on It Won’t Be Like This Forever.
I’d say the album has riffs but they could be anyone’s riffs. Dumbstruck Dumbfuck is a decent opener, fizzing in its own distortion but knowingly fished from Kerrang. Heartbreak of the Century goes 2003 Blink-182 on all our asses, yes, keeping that era going like a pandering nostalgia act. The riff of Take Me With You is somewhat distinct, but as soon as it ends, we’re back into Blink save for a discrete backing synth and final guitar lick.
But even as they tiptoe around their own identity, Neck Deep are easy to listen to as a pop punk throwback on their self-titled, far more charmingly with a head screwed on tight than how they operated on The Peace and the Panic and All Distortions Are Intentional. I supposed they’ve embraced what they believe to be their calling – if you’ve got it flaunt it, and Neck Deep’s self-titled flaunts.
Oh yeah, enter catty remark about how it’s still better than Machine Gun Kelly.
Best track – This Is All My Fault.
Rating – 5 out of 10
PEANUTBUTTERPOPE 