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Happy International Women’s Day 2017 - Photografuzz & Co

International Women's Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

International Women's Day (IWD) has been observed since in the early 1900's - a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies. International Women's Day is a collective day of global celebration and a call for gender parity. No one government, NGO, charity, corporation, academic institution, women's network or media hub is solely responsible for International Women's Day. Many organizations declare an annual IWD theme that supports their specific agenda or cause, and some of these are adopted more widely with relevance than others.

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Neck Deep - The New Era Of Pop Punk Scenes

Neck Deep have bounced into success with their fresh approach to modern day pop-punk, and with their debut album Wishful Thinking receiving an incredibly positive response, we caught up with them amidst their UK headline tour to talk about how it all started for the band as we reminisce about what it was like discovering music growing up.

First thing’s first, where did the name Neck Deep come from?

Lloyd: Title Fight

Ben: Haha fuck off. It came from a Crucial Dudes song, the song is Boom Roasted and there’s a line in there that’s “neck deep in what you couldn’t be” and I just thought Neck Deep, that kinda clicks. It’s nice and snappy, it’s short…

L: Everyone thinks it’s from a Title Fight song, but it’s not.

Well there we go. Now, there’s this new era of pop-punk in the UK at the moment and you guys are kind of at the forefront of it. How do you feel about being the leaders of a new pop-punk generation?

Fil: Definitely, though I don’t think we are the leaders.

B: I don’t think we are THE leaders, but if people see us as that, I mean there’s a lot of other good bands out there doing some really good stuff so I don’t think we’re the only ones. But, to be a part of that whole revival is awesome. Considering we were all big pop-punk fans.

F: Yeah, we all grew up listening to it, so it’s just playing what we like the most really and it just happened to coincide with when people were like “oh I actually kind of like this again now”.

So what bands influenced the formation of Neck Deep? What were your favourite albums growing up?

Matt: We’ve got all sorts really.

L: Take This To Your Grave by Fall Out Boy.

M: Dookie by Green Day.

B: Any Blink or New Found album.

F: Sticks And Stones, the self-titled one.

B: Pretty much just ALL the pop-punk, Sum 41.

L: All the classics.

B: Basically anything that was on Kerrang back in the day I used to really listen to. I even used to have a soft spot for American Hi-Fi, just shit like that that came out in the early 2000s.

L: Like Goldfinger.

B: Anything that was on Tony Hawks or Kerrang in the early 2000s is what we were getting into

L: We could name SO many bands

B: Yeah anything from that era, because we were all kids so that’s how we found our music. We didn’t go on the internet and search for it, it was either on TV or in a game, or CDs that came with magazines.

M: When you wanted to see Rollin’ by Limp Bizkit and you had to sit there for 4 hours waiting for it to come on.

B: Or, what was that Kid Rock song?

L: American Badass was the best.

B: American Badass, that was it! There we go, Kid Rock was our main influence.

Haha, amazing! Now, you’ve already received a lot of great feedback for your album [Wishful Thinking], does it feel that the hard work is finally paying off?

B: Yeah definitely.

F: I mean, it’s not even technically out yet but we did the stream and everyone seems to really like it.

B: But the fact that, we were all starting to get a bit anxious because we’ve had it for so long.

F: Yeah it feels like we’ve had it forever.

B: It feels almost old to us now, but to have it out there and for people to be giving us such a good response and to be able to play the songs live finally, yeah, it’s a good feeling.

What were the influences when writing the record?

B: All sorts really. We wanted to take it back, because there is this whole new wave of pop-punk and we wanted to sound like classic pop-punk, but just done well.

L: That’s what we listened to, that’s what pop-punk is to us. We’re not trying to make a new sub-genre of pop-punk, we’re not trying to be like “Oh my god it’s so original” we just want to make dead good, catchy pop-punk.

B: Like the stuff we listened to when we were younger, because they are still our influences. The music that we grew up on is still the music we listen to day-to-day. We didn’t want to make a fucking genre-defining album; we just wanted to have a good crack at making some solid pop-punk.

Are there any particular stories or themes in the writing, on the lyrical side of things?

B: I just sort of write from experience and what’s going on in my life at the time, and writing the whole album we were all pretty happy. Like, a lot of people have already said “Oh this album is so happy” and I guess it’s because we were all pretty stoked the whole time, we’re not negative people.

L: We’re not kids, we’re 22 now. We’re not 16 year-old kids that are dead angsty, so not every song is going to be like “I’m so full of angst grrrrr”.

B: Yeah, at this point in our lives, we’re doing this pretty much, not as a living but we’re doing this full-time and that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do and as far as our personal lives go I think we’re all fairly happy so it kinda shows through in the album. I think general themes throughout the album lyrically are probably; growing up and rather than being like “my fucking ex-girlfriend moan moan moan” I actually wrote about being in love instead.

F: Gay.

B: Fuck off! You listen to Blink and you listen to all the love songs they’ve got, they’ve got loads!

M: Have they?

F: Yeah of course they have!

B: Going Away to College, Josie… Mark writes loads of love songs.

M: And the other one [Tom DeLonge] writes about shitting and pissing everywhere.

L: Well he did like 20 years ago, now he writes about fucking space!

B: But yeah, with us it’s definitely about growing up, being in love and some other bits and bobs here and there.

F: Bit more diverse than the EP isn’t it, it covers a bit more ground in terms of themes.

B: Yeah definitely.

What’s your favourite track and why?

F: Oooooh, erm. What’s the last one called again? Candour? Yeah probably Candour. Just, because it’s so fucking good.

L: Candour is mine as well.

B: Mine is probably either Losing Teeth or Damsel In Distress.

F: Or Staircase Wit actually.

M: I like Zoltar Speaks, because I really like the chorus in that and the bit at the beginning is hilarious.

L: Candour’s just got all the FEELS man.

Dani: I think Mileage is pretty good.

F: Yeaaah Mileage is a tune, I like that one.

M: Tell you what, we like the whole album.

Haha! Okay, good. So what are you hoping to achieve from this tour?

(This is where Dani said something rude and the boys demanded we don’t quote it, we’ll leave it up to you to work it out)

B: I’d said just for us to put on a show, to showcase us.

F: It’s a bit of a chance to prove that we can do a headline tour, because we’ve not really been around that long.

L: Show people we can actually do it.

F: Because we had no idea how well it’d actually do, but a bunch of the shows are sold out so we’re really happy with that.

B: We just want to give people a good show mainly, to show off us rather than us supporting someone. Not that we don’t like supporting people but…

F: We’re dead big believers in putting on a show, we haven’t done anything crazy yet but we never want to just fucking come out, go “here’s a song, here’s a song, here’s another song” we’re always trying to think of little things we can do.

B: Foam, fireworks…

M: We’re sorting out a little firework thing to go on the end of my guitar.

B: I thought you were going to say on the end of your knob then.

L: We’re not fucking Rammstein.

Ahahaha! Right, and obviously you’ve kicked the New Year off in style with the tour, how can the year get better for you?

B: More touring.

L: Loads more touring, we’re going to some places we’ve never been.

F: Tour in hot places.

B: And hoping that the album does well, we still have the success of that to see to.

L: Yeah, as much as we like the album and at the end of the day we’re happy with it and that’s all that matters. BUT at the same time, you want to know that other people have enjoyed all the effort that you put into it. So, if people want to actually purchase it and not illegally download it, that’d be great.

F: If you’re going to illegally download it at least come to a show.

B: Yeah, so basically we just want everyone to enjoy the album and tour as much as possible.

Interview By: Tamsyn Wilce (BTNUK)