Interview by Kris Peters
In little more than a decade, UK rock outfit Neck Deep have gone from a band rehearsing in a spare bedroom to one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, but you get the feeling despite that the boys still have their feet planted firmly on the ground.
For verification of this you need look no further than their upcoming fifth self-titled album which was conceived, recorded, mixed and mastered in a warehouse not far from where things licked off some 12 years ago.
Despite literally being offered the opportunity to record pretty much anywhere they wanted, using whoever they wanted, Neck Deep instead set out to deliver an album completely of their own volition which encompassed everything fans love about the band while harking back to the early days where blind ambition was the primary driving force.
With the album due out on January 19, HEAVY sat down with frontman Ben Barlow to find out more.
We start by asking Ben what this period is like, waiting for the album to be let loose on the public.
"It's a little nerve-wracking," he admitted, "in the sense that you finish a record, and you put it out to the world and then whatever people think of it is whatever people think of it. We always love what we do, and we always write for us, but it's kind of nerve-wracking thinking the thing you worked so hard on and the thing you poured your heart and soul into is going to be either loved or loather by people. But I think people are gonna love it. It's a little bit of a return to our roots in a lot of ways, and I think fans are gonna love that. We still managed to keep it fresh and have a new element and sound in there, maybe overall a little tighter and a little slicker, so…yeah. I'm not too nervous about it. We've got some big shows coming up that I'm more nervous about. It's weird these days how you put out a record to support touring, rather than the other way around. We've got our biggest headline show ever coming up in the UK, and that's my goal. I'm fully set on that. I wanna sell that out. I know people will love the record, and it will do well, and we're gonna have fun playing it, but to me, I wanna see 10,000 people screaming the words back at me. A few things to look forward to and a few things to be nervous about, but good nerves generally."
In the full interview, Ben talks more about the album musically, the singles released so far and how they represent the whole album, how this is a return to roots for Neck Deep, how making the album in their own warehouse impacted the final result, why they decided to make this, their fifth album, self-titled and more.