Planting Your Roots With BEN BARLOW From NECK DEEP

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.