My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 333 - NECK DEEP

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Robbie is joined by Welsh pop punk band Neck Deep today to break down their brand new self-titled record track-by-track! Plus, the band reveals their most 'Spinal Tap' moments on stage and what they think of Ryan Reynolds/Rob McElhenney taking over their home club, Wrexham. #NeckDeep #PopPunk ****************************************   My Mom's Basement is a weekly podcast hosted by Robbie Fox, started in March 2019, to discuss movies, music, comic books, wrestling, mixed martial arts, and more with his friends and idols alike!   Subscribe on Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/MyMomsBasementWithRobbieFox Subscribe on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-moms-basement/id1457255205 Follow Robbie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatrobbiefox Follow Robbie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobbieBarstool My Mom's Basement Merchandise: https://store.barstoolsports.com/collections/my-moms-basementYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Alright, hello and welcome back to My Mom's Basement. It is Robbie Fox, and I am here with Neck Deep. This is a special one for me, I've been a fan of Neck Deep for years, I've seen you guys live a bunch, and to talk to you guys about this album in particular is especially awesome, because I love it. Thank you guys for being here. Thank you for having us. Thanks for the kind words so we will be talking about the self-titled album i want to talk about the tour though how's the tour going you're at the tail end of it now yeah really fun honestly probably one of the most fun we've had on tour and in a long time i think it's been successful which is always nice it's always nice to have some sold out dates and some big shows but just generally good hangs really good hangs good vibes everyone's having a good time on stage and

having good shows so especially after the last record too like adai we did in at the end of 2019 it came out in 2020 so it's all touring just got shut down for that immediately so it's nice to release a record that one people love and two we can just get out and play it straight away i read that the tour started with a band-wide case of food poisoning is that true we were fucked i don't think it was food poisoning i think it was norovirus or whatever which is like winter sickness bug but started with west west is feeling a little patient zero yeah i got it bad we all fell I never I want it to be stated on the record

that I never fell yeah did you guys you guys just played shows through you didn't cancel any shows right we had to get some IVs we didn't have to get IVs

but we did we did have to get IVs to be honest we probably did I did not there was one show where we played in Atlanta

where I kept going off the side of the stage and Sam was like, what's he doing? Is there something wrong with his ears? I was just spewing into a trash can. Mid-show. That's my worst nightmare. That was literally like, we have like a fake pop punk band here at Barstool. And before our first show, it was like, oh my God, I'm going to puke on stage.

I didn't, thankfully. I still haven't, but. I puked in the wings, but not on stage. I puked in my pants on stage yeah puking my pants on stage yeah is that the most like spinal tap moment you've had on stage or no um no we had it we i'm sure we had like a spinal tap thing recently oh we were trying to figure out our production for alley pally and we were like oh we need to get this giant ufo in or whatever we're not doing it because it costs too much money but we, but we had a feeling that it would

turn out very Spinal Tap. That would be our Stonehenge. We would spend a ton of money and it would just be nothing. Nah, nothing too Spinal Tap, really. We've had my laptops crash and then our friends come on stage and update fucking laptop drivers

on stage, honestly. Yeah, and everyone looked at me and was like you've got to do stand up to a room full of german people okay yeah so that that that was kind of spinal tap there was that festival in europe where every piece of gear broke like every piece we played played maybe three or four songs i think it. A wee Spinal Tap. That stage was haunted, though. That day, like, Mill and Colin played, they started playing

literally the first note of their song and the bass cap just set fire. And then While She Sleeps played before us and every, like, song, the PA would just go off. And then off. And then our shit just blew up.

Kind of punk rock. Yeah, in a weird... In a way. It kicked our ass into gear after that show we're like we are never ever ever playing a show like that again so let's make sure that never ever happens again our front house guy was not happy with us he was like guys it's a shambles yeah i'm pretty sure another tm i think it might have been charlie xcx's tm could hear us all just

bitching and moaning and complaining and thinking about how we're going to fix it. And he was like, do you guys want a pizza? It sounds like you guys want a pizza. Like, yes, please.

But not now. But yeah, that was, that was about as spinal tap as it got. We've definitely kicked our asses into gear since then though. For sure. I saw an interview with you recently where you said coming into this album, coming into this recording session or the whole process, you guys all had a common theme of what you wanted to do, what you wanted to say with this album.

What do you feel like that was? I think it was just to get back to what we do best. I think it was like we'd spent a lot of time on the last record, I think, like trying to expand the sound and maybe trying to move away from pop punk a little bit just to see what we could do and see where it took us. And, um, obviously COVID then kind of hit that record pretty hard, but I think COVID gave us a lot of perspective on just like who we are as people and as a band and what we want out of the band and what fans expect out of it. So I think, yeah, we all got on the same page, like, pretty early on. And it was like, we're writing a pop punk record

and we're going to try and do it as best we can. And yeah, so that was me anyway. The aim was to just kind of get back to doing what we did best. I assume it feels like you did what you set out to do in that sense, too, because the reception's been incredible. Yeah, definitely. I mean, to be honest, like like we were sat writing these pop punk songs and we were like these are good like we we like these songs like we love them and we hope

fans love them too but i think the reception has been more than we could have could have sort of validated yeah i don't want to sound too big-headed we know what we're doing but like we we we thought that people would like the record and we you know we always had the the fan base in mind when when writing it but it's nice to have it validated to go oh cool we can't we we can still do that thing and people still like it so yeah before we get into the album itself who did the artwork because i feel like it matches that like fun chaotic vibe so well it was evan wesselman yeah check him out um but yeah again i think even with the visual kind of language what we were trying to do is

like yeah let's go for something more vibrant more colorful like just loud and in your face and it looks for the rest of the albums yeah it definitely looks good amongst the rest of them and i think just visually it just lines up pretty well with how it sounds too so like we've been using a bunch of that for production and it's given us a real good like kind of overall theme for for a lot of stuff so it's kind of what you want to have good artwork really you know you want to you want to be able to apply it to a bunch of different things and yeah it's very very malleable and applicable to stuff so we're stoked do you guys put a lot of effort into like the aesthetic of each era of neck deep because it feels like every era does have a very different visual you know panel definitely yeah i'd say visually we're probably trying um

yeah try and try and switch it up as much as we can but we definitely take i mean west is big visual guy there's a lot of our merch and stage stuff and all that kind of stuff but i'd say we like seeing whether the out like the artist kind of leads it to like obviously like if we go somewhere we already know what their their artwork is like and i think most like a lot of the time on most of the records we like giving people free reign just to be like well the album's about this here's a couple lyrics this is what we're thinking see what you can do um so yeah it's also like a collaborative effort on sort of what we get back for the record anyway as to where it goes but yeah we're all i think we're all aesthetic people we all like like i don't know clothes or art or

whatever you know what i mean we know what looks good we know what sucks and i think we know what applies to us i think for the most part. I'm wearing some odd shoes right now that I'm still 100% sold on. They're good. I told my girlfriend about my shoes and she laughed at me. You guys all came in with some colorful shoes on. Yeah. We were in Boston recently.

We hit the New Balance outlet. So, yeah, I went crazy for a few deals. I am my mother's son. She'd be proud of me. Let's get into this album. I want to go through it track by track because I really do love it. I don't think there's a skip on the album. First one, Dumbstruck Dumbfuck.

I feel like Neck Deep at this point has perfected the art of the album opener. What do you think the secret is to a great opening song? It's got to just grip you immediately it's got to get your attention immediately you know this one's the opener as soon as you write it yeah kind of i would say i think instrumentally when we when we had it even when we wrote this the demo was originally called oregon spelt wrong when we were there on a day off we like put it together in the back lounge and had that for then a couple years but even when we were there on a day off we like put it together in the back lounge and had that for then a couple years but even when we had that it was just the intro verse riff and we were

sort of going oh this could this sounds like it could open a record but so even then we kind of knew but it wasn't like this is going to be the opening to a record or whatever that just and that was a song that got pulled back into the pool for this album a little bit later on i remember we sat in la and like we were talking about how we wanted the record to feel and sound and like where it was going and stuff and it was like i remember specifically saying like this the way that this verse moves feels and sets of like that's that's the sound we need to kind of bottle and hone in on like classic pop punk, but with a more modern kind of grit to it, I guess.

And yeah, that was an immediate one. I think it has to feel like, maybe because I'm a Blink fanboy and I'm a little biased, but like it has to feel like an anthem almost. Like I know they closed Enema with anthem, but like, I don't know. It has to be. Anthem Part 2 is maybe the most iconic opening track

in the genre for sure yeah for sure and i think that's probably always a point of reference for us like just generally even when we're mixing like we're getting records sent off to mix i'm pretty sure we always have take off the pants and jacket in there for sure just the way that that album hits the way that it sounds the production's perfect like there'll always be a reference for us for sure um the next one sort yourself out another super fast energetic one um i love the bass tone on this when everything drops out in the second verse and everything super sick um what were the sonic influences for you seb as the producer of this record um i think like ben said take off Take Off is always sonically very high on the list.

It's all just Jerry Finn. It's all like Sun 41, Green Day, that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's always floating around. But I'm trying to think like even just musically for that one song in particular, how it feels. But I think that's the most blink one on the record honestly maybe the flowers uh you have a song about aliens on this record yeah i guess i guess good point yeah just ripping blink yeah we're always just writing their coattails who isn't i mean that's the way to go in this genre yeah for sure i think so like they are i think undoubtedly the best pop punk band that there's ever been and so

you know i think kind of they defined what the genre was and is so yeah newfound glory as well is definitely another like big influence on on our sound for sure um pals is the drummer for the first time on a neck deep album did you feel a ton of pressure yeah yeah straight yeah was it hard coming up with these parts uh well there was like there's bits that they that were already done like there's there's parts that were in the demos that once they were in there that you couldn't possibly imagine anything else and like there's fills that sam wrote there's fills that sebro there's there's bits that that were already there like i embellished some of it and like in the studio at the time i think i just made some bits up which you know naturally happens but

like yeah it was i felt a ton of pressure but i had fun and like it's like recording it and tracking it and then when you're like right i gotta fucking learn it now which is obviously it sounds backwards but it's true but yeah no it's a bit no. It was a big deal. And I think, like, we had toured for a minute before that, but still, like, getting that first one out of the way. And we'd done Shut the Fuck Up and Heartbreak before. That's true. So there was already a couple of them, and you'd smashed it on them, and, like, even, you know,

we'd went, like, like half time on a chorus which was like powell's idea so like they'd already been sort of influenced like the one of my favorite bits on the record is the take me with you in the bridge where it goes to the db right just before before it breaks out like i love that bit but i think the other thing about it was like neck deep had such a distinct drum sound yeah that there's i'm i'm different i'm not that there's no point trying to be that just god god do i mean i'm more of a like a what the songs need kind of person it definitely feels like it fits in but it's definitely your unique style i saw justin hawkins was even giving you praise for it my mom was like oh my god cool it's

pretty awesome it's the same with every record though like we've always said like we don't want to compete with ourselves on previous records and and be like it has to be better because what is better or you know what i mean i kind of hate fills over vocals as well oh interesting it's like a pet peeve of yours kind of yeah, yeah. Overplaying? It loads of showy fills over vocals. It does my head in. Do you have a favorite fill you played on this album? God, I can't remember. Again, Take Me With You's got a couple of choppy.

Take Me With You has every tempo in it. Take Me With You, probably. I remember watching you track that one, and it was fun. It looked hard, but it was fun. But as well, I think with you probably. I remember watching you track that one and it was fun. It looked hard, but it was fun. But as well, I think with you as well, I think we've still managed to keep the kind of essence of what neck deep is, especially on that drum side too because still a very metal-influenced drummer.

There's still some metal sensibilities there and that kind of thing. I was a metal kid until I went to college and then they were like, stop the pedal play some stevie wonder so um this is all my fault absolute head banger the chorus goes so hard how long does it take a song like this to come together this was an old one this one did take a while to come together yeah this one this one i was i was beating my head against the wall trying to write the chorus for it, for sure. And it eventually clicks.

Me and you started this one in like 2015, 2016. Is this conclusions? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Verses came together super easy. I remember writing the verses for it. And we had the instrumental chorus, but never had a vocal chorus.

2016? You sent me out that. Eight years ago. That's crazy. I think you might have had the longest process on the whole record. I mean, it's probably less of a process

and more of just like not having a place for it, almost, because it was before the piece in the Panic, so it was maybe a little too pop-punky and like whatever

we were going for on that record to fit on that one. Then we did ADAI, so it wouldn't fit on that one then we did adai so it wouldn't fit on that record either and then i guess it's just come back you know we we always cycle through demos and because we forget shit so like we'll always cycle through stuff and just see if anything different jumps out or we can do anything different with it i guess so yeah just

i guess it took eight years to like get around to to getting it there but yeah yeah it's always nice to remind yourself, flicking through old demos, because sometimes a great song can come from one little riff that's just tucked away, hidden away somewhere that five years ago you didn't think anything of. But a new perspective on old stuff has worked for us many a time.

So yeah, The Secret Vault. And then We Need More Bricks. This is one of the big singles from the album i assume this one's going hard live because it sounds like it was almost written to to be played live yeah i think we write most of our stuff to be played live or like at least um we're writing with the live show in mind but yeah definitely going off live it's a hard one for sure and that chorus is unique the delay before you hit bricks how did you come up with that i don't know it's like the the initial like when we need more bricks i kind of just saw that as like a i kind of like a hardcore kind of mosh call in a way it seems like that offbeat little mosh little mosh call tends to i don't know that's a a good signature of um of like certain hardcore music and so i feel like yeah we

were writing this for the live show i guess so yeah you're immediately thinking like what's that big crowd part gonna be like you know is this part gonna get people moshing blah blah blah so um yeah i think i was just taking some uh taking some reference from that was another early song too like in the process you'd had that for a little bit right so it's yeah i was struggling to write in uh a one bed apart with my fiance who was working um like video calls all the time so i went to a coffee shop and wrote that all on midi like the whole it's never happened for me before but i wrote the whole song on midi bass and drums and then was like oh like that's crazy that's just like a fully done song went back recorded the guitar and then that was pretty much

that yeah it was weird one midi midi whatever works yeah you gotta find sometimes you just gotta like take yourself out of your usual environment your usual routine i do it all the time right in lyrics like i'll know it's almost like when you're trying to get to sleep like you just know like this isn't working i need to change like how i'm doing things and lyrics all the time it's just like i might just need to go outside or like no pun but um or like go into the other room or whatever and just like switch things up so yeah sometimes going to a coffee shop and not touching an instrument is the way to do it which

is weird for one of the like most energetic yeah yeah riffier songs but doesn't sound like a coffee shop song no absolutely not but like staring at the neck of a guitar especially when you're in the thick of writing an album can be like i've I've played every... I've done all the combinations. I've done all the notes. You get a bit lost in it too, whereas on MIDI sometimes, you're just putting what's coming in your head. You're kind of just like, oh, I hear this.

And then you're like... You can't get distracted by just playing for hours, which sometimes I'll do. Then we've got Heartbreak of the Century. This was the first one that we, the fans, heard from the the album i assume it was very early in the process as well um was shut the fuck up almost gonna be on this album as well yeah think about that it was close i think it was just that that smidge too far away it seemed like it's one of them where it was on the record i feel like everyone who would put the record on

and that song would come on and be like, skip, because I've heard this for like two years or something. And I always hated that when I would get a record and be like, oh, I have to skip a song. Which we were a little bit nervous about with Heartbreak because that had been out for pretty much a year. Almost a year, right? Yeah, pretty much.

But the record was sort of taking shape at that point, so we knew, like, that's going to kind of be on there, and we needed it. And the record was originally going to come out in November, so Feb to November felt okay, and then it delayed. Was that recorded when you guys went to California to originally record this, or was that even before that? That was before that.

Before again, yeah. We recorded version one when we did Shut the Fuck Up. Yeah. We redid it. And then redid it again. And then redid it. And then redid the drums again, yeah. Is the single and the album version different at all?

Yeah. Different mixes? Yeah, different mixes. Same stems and same recording and everything. Oh, and we recorded drums, true. Sorry, and re-recorded drums, true. Sorry, yeah, yeah, from that version too. Yeah, from the single version that came out in February or whenever it came out.

Yeah, re-recorded drums and to make sure that the mix sounded the same as the rest of the record. Yeah, I got a shot at the bass solo too. The bass solo in that one was incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a stupidly hard part to play. That's another one written on your it is i can't do it it's hard yeah fast did it there's a video some indonesian kids just straight rock

it was more more insane as well the original version was more insane yeah it was yeah we were we were it was a really hard song to mix too took a while right even for the album mix when we had it redone like notes on that one like just a weird song the verses are pretty much blast beats so it's yeah but it's like with clean guitars

strange one shiny blast beats go outside is the next one this one has some of my favorite guitars on the album and some of my favorite lyrics on the album i feel like from like the anxiety depression point of view it's very relatable is it easier or harder to write songs very personal like that as you get older um i mean it may be a little easier to write songs like that these days i think i just just we just know ourselves better maybe you know like i think when i was younger i was still trying to figure shit

out so i didn't really know like what was going on in my head so i listened back to some of our old songs that are maybe a bit like that and not that i think they're naive but like i know that my um outlook on things and my knowledge of myself and my brain is better but that was actually a song that seb started writing initially um for the longest time all we had was like i should go outside get some air and then it was just a lot of like skee-bop and and eventually it was cool like you know because in the band previously i think it's been very you know it's been 99.9 of the lyrics that i've done and to have somebody come in and be able to especially someone like my brother we obviously grew up listening to music and loving the same

things about music it was sick to like ah cool okay you you've set the the the groundwork for this song and cool i can just now go and riff on that. And so in a way, maybe that made that song a little easier to write because I didn't have to do the whole overthinking what it's about and blah, blah, blah, blah. I think the hardest part with songwriting, with any song, I mean, songwriting, painting, whatever, it's the blank canvas that's the hardest part of it.

You know what I mean? It's the like, well, what the fuck do i pull from where kind of thing but when there's when there's a theme or a thread you know yeah yeah so i just pulled on that thread a little bit but a lot of those are quite a bunch of the original lyrics of yours and yeah i feel like that one has one of the strongest bridges on the album too oh yeah Oh, yeah. I love that. That one goes, the guitar that opens it, and then just going hard into the outro. I've got a great, well, I say great. I don't know if we're allowed to talk about Magic Mushrooms on this. Oh, yeah.

Oh, hell yeah. Fuck yeah. Okay. Barstool, of course. Fuck yeah. Yeah, I was going to say. All right, fuck yeah. Well, there was one day in the studio where it was like, we were maybe struggling a little

bit. It was like a little slow. At least I was struggling to write lyrics, and I was kind of like getting stuck in a rut um and then i don't know if you want me as well me and palsy did mushrooms whatever and it was great and i literally went home that night and finished two songs and one of them was that the oh it's like i fell through the trap door it was that bit that i wrote and uh no and parents i finished. I wrote the two verses for Parents. And I've been struggling over those. But I remember we'd go outside because you were struggling. It was like, oh, I just don't know about this song.

It was like, well, maybe this song just doesn't make it and we do another song. And it was like, no, please. Next morning came and was like, so yeah, finish that. And I finished another one. Yeah. So yeah, Shout Out Magic Mushrooms. Shout Out Mushrooms.

Fucking works. Yeah, let's go. Take Me With You you next the Alien song you guys Alien guys? are you an Alien band? yeah I think so yeah we are at this point

yeah yeah Palsy and Seb are probably in the deepest and I'd say maybe me and then Sam and Wes just have to listen to

the highlights was this inspired by your Alien interest? inspired by Blink? Where did this one come from? I think it was more like, of course, Blink. I think Tom introduced... I mean, our older brother also got us into like...

My older brother told me about aliens and conspiracies and shit. I remember going into school and being like, by the way, guys, aliens are real because my brother told me. So there was that element but there was also it was around the time the like hearings were going on or there was like whistleblower shit or there was something going on i think they go trotted out an alien you remember that yeah yeah yeah that was just that's cool yeah that would did that get debunked though no it looked like one of those is it cake yeah straight up yeah i don't think they have like 100 debunked it but the guy who's involved with it

is like has been involved with hoaxes before yeah so yeah whatever it is around that's very dry it looks like a dusty boys um moisturiser yeah no moisturisers in our space that was another studio one take me with you yeah but as, I remember the idea for that came from, I remember texting you and saying, yeah, we should write a song about aliens called Take Me With You. And I think that was one of the first times that the song name has probably come along beforehand. That is like a legit technique that a lot of people use

as a starting point. So yeah, it started more with the idea of like, oh, that would be a good name for a song about aliens. So, yeah. The synth in the final chorus is awesome as well. Hell, yeah. I love that. That was added, like, later.

That was added, like, right towards the end, I think, right? Before we put the... You love a synth. Yeah, I love a synth, too. Yeah. But that was a, like, last-minute addition, I think, before it was, like, submitted. You just go and do all the songs being like, what can I put a moog over?

Yeah, pretty much. Is it on another song on this record too? Oh, there's a synth in the verse of Conclusions. Yeah, and the reason the chorus is like, go outside, has a magic on it. Mm-hmm. Could you guys name collectively four albums that influenced Neck Deep the most? I think they would all be very... I think it would depend on who you asked really joint blink one and then these guys well yeah some of the blink i'd say self-taught well i would say ours we probably share a lot of but

one of my unique more unique ones for me would probably be uh doubt screen like sitting in color like massive influence on me and i think that's probably where a lot of our sad songs come from. Other than that, me and Seb probably share I don't know what Blink albums. Yeah, we could argue. What about you guys? You said self-titled or untitled. I'd say self-titled or untitled.

Whatever. By the way, Chili Peppers. That's the story. What's the story? Sorry. that's the story what's the story sorry yeah alkaline trio is a big one yeah speak for me like good morning would probably be my trio record which is a unpopular opinion because everyone always seems to go for from here to infirmary, but Good Morning was the first one that I listened to and bought with my own money when I was younger,

so that's a big one for me. What about drummers for you? Coming from a metal area, do you have specific drummers? I'm not going to say Thomas Hart from A Sugar because it just doesn't fit the shoe, but Nick from Northlane, just how creative he is, he's awesome, but again, it doesn't really fit the shoe but like nick from north lane just how like creative he is he's awesome but again it doesn't really fit the shoe but drums wise like zach farrow from paramore is like just the he he's perfect there's no i don't think he there's a yeah there's he's perfect yeah

we'll send this to him Brad Wilkes from Rage yeah just like that brute rhythm like I want to get a bit more of that into my playing yeah exactly yeah

Elan Rubin how could you forget him Elan Rubin I mean Nine Inch Nails is one of my favourite bands and like being able to watch him play for Nine Inch Nails

is like it's like a Sunday morning it's just fucking fantastic they may not mean to but they do this one kind of has like a Green Day Church on Sunday vibe to me yeah do this one kind of has like a green day church on sunday vibe to me yeah you guys hear that in it at all yeah definitely i think at the time i was like i

mean it's not super i mean blink neighborhoods this is again a huge one for it but as well i think neighborhoods is probably also inspired by what i'm gonna gonna say even though it's not like super super reminiscent i think the general feel is there uh but like bands like the clash and the buzzcocks at the time i was listening to a lot of a lot of london calling which has like a lot of like folk rhythm and sort of sensibilities to it and um i was kind of trying to think of like a yeah like a a fast almost like jiggy funk i'm not folk punk song i mean that like really kind of um like i don't know i don't know what the technical drum term for it was but yeah that was that's another one that took a while to get into place had that had that idea in that chorus for a few years and yeah tried getting it into like full band form for a

while and took a minute to click normally when i write guitar parts and stuff they need to be heavily neck deep by you guys because i'm like a very basic guitar player and can kind of come up with like very basic stuff so i have to go this is the idea but it's like doing a rock cover of of folk songs yeah like folky indie almost yeah yeah um and again i think that comes from playing Lizard Dallas Green and stuff when I was younger and just acoustic and folk stuff, like Iron and Wine and Bon Iver and shit like that. So I think, again, yeah, a lot of the stuff

that I tend to write does end up sounding a bit folky. So I think that's maybe where that comes from too with this one. Lyrically, I like this one too because it's a spin on the pop punk trope of like fuck my parents song it's like a very mature like we're gonna look at this from a grown-up point of view and be like ah no they they weren't trying to fuck us up but it happens yeah yeah for sure and it's one of those universal truths it's based off a poem well there's actually a few levels of things so there's an initial poem by a guy called um

larkin poe called this be the verse and then but i initially saw it on a supreme t-shirt they had a t-shirt that said they fuck you up your mom and dad they may not mean to but they do and um looked into what that was it's this be the verse and yeah so i uh changed it changed it a little bit to fit the cadence and switch it up a little bit but yeah um a couple levels of inspiration there but i saw that initially and was like yeah they they do fuck you up like they you know for better or for worse they're influential they're the most influential people in our lives but they're humans do i react like this because i because i want to react like

this or is this because i've learned in my dna or they've taught me how to think about things i think that does come at like mid-20s you start going like shit i'm turning into my parents why is that and then although you realize that your parents are just big kids yeah um it won't be like this forever do you ever feel a responsibility to write songs like this for your fan base because obviously neck deep is one of those bands where a lot of people resonate with your music and they want to hear a message quite literally like it won't be like this forever yeah yeah uh that's a great question yeah um to a degree yeah i would say i'd say when we wrote life's not to get you

um it was like at the height of our Warped Tour experience, like we were meeting a lot of fans and the fandom was like crazy then as well and there was a lot of like really inspiring but like really sad and kind of at times overwhelming stories and interactions with people when they would talk about, you know, their depression and anxiety or even self-harm and stuff like that. And it was like, right, OK, well, I don't want to be the band that people like cut themselves to. I want to be the band that stops people doing that. And so, you know, with the with the success and how much that that album resonated with people. Yeah, I think I do feel a little bit of a duty of like putting a positive spin on things

and writing positive songs like you know if it's something that we do well and i feel honest about and it's it comes from a good place and it's like why wouldn't i and if people and if people are like well this made me fall in love with your band not just like oh yeah like a couple tunes good tunes like it's shit that helps people through their life. Yeah, it doesn't really get any bigger than that, I think, being that kind of band for people that genuinely gets them out of a tough spot. So, yeah, there's some responsibility there, and I think there's been a return to that on this record a little bit.

Just with the messaging, it's not as sad and woe is me and the world's so bad. There is still a hopeful message in there, too. Have you guys been playing this one live uh yeah yeah yeah we have yeah we've been we've played pretty much everything off the new record uh so far and it's all going down super well so there's one that we haven't played yet is that the final one on the record moody weirdo why haven't you played this one i love this song i think i think because we were surprised that people like it as much as they did honestly yeah because it was

a weird one for us just wasn't sure if it was going to make it on the record it's one of my favorites on the whole album it almost ended up in a way on the last record on ADAI which was where

you know classic neck deep fan base was like, don't give us this record, give us another record. So then when we give them the record, they're like, we want the song live. That sounds like it was off the record a good one. So it's like, we just thought. It's a frustrating balance. When we were just getting ready for this tour,

it was like, out of all the songs, that's probably the least like gonna be requested song and then yeah it's the opposite boy will be wrong yeah everyone's asking for yeah it's another one lyrically where it's you know like people are resonating with it i assume yeah i think you're kind of talking to like your younger self in a way i think it's just uh i think the chorus especially is like oh the verse is definitely yeah the verses I definitely got pretty deep on that I actually think the second verse lyrics on on this song are probably some of my

favorite lyrics on the record the whole like the bullet train shakes the shakes the patients out of this waiting game the seventh day of arguing with the kid in the picture frame might have been very high right in that too but it's good and but the chorus I think is this uplifting thing i think you know for the song that sounds the most like it's off adai which is like our weird album the chorus sounds like the most life's not out to get you kind of vibe to it like it's super positive super uplifting like you know i think it's just a a good sort of um it's it's i don't know like it's a nice reminder for people i think you know it's it's simple it's easy to remember

easy to sing and just yeah it's uh it's a bop i had no idea that it was going to do as well as it was and i think as well we were like because we fucked around for so long making this record, we like restarted making the record halfway through, basically. We lost probably six weeks, five to six weeks out of the overall process. So we were maybe like, I'm sure we would have loved the record to be a song or two longer, but just like the way that the record turned out in terms of how we made it. I think adding more songs on there that were maybe like not quite longer but just like the way that the record turned out in terms of how we made it um i think adding more songs on there that were maybe like not quite the the quite finished would have just

sucked and we knew that we had 10 really solid songs but this was one of the last to get done and it and it took a minute to kind of get there again because i knew i wanted the lyrics to be good and so it was worth sticking it out for that but But I think once we had this one in the bag, it was like, let's call it a 10. Let's not stress ourselves out trying to and be stressed writing another two songs because that just, the songs wouldn't be any good. So yeah, this was right at the end

and nice little cherry on top, I think it ended up being. Do you guys have a favorite lyric from the album? Yeah, what are your favorite lyrics? Can I drive the UFO? That's a good one. What was it? It's the second. I think it's the second verse of Go Outside I like.

I tell you everything. I like that, yeah. I really like the Godspeed Little Sinner line. That was nearly an album title. That's a really good one. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, we were debating that for an album title, but the self-title prevailed.

I was also heavily pushing for Asses to the Masses, by the way. Asses to the Masses, the album title? I wanted that. I seriously wanted that. That could be a tour title, too. Yeah, it could be. It's true. Or the next album should just be called

Asses to the Masses Part 2. Oh, no, Part 1. Yeah, I like that. I'm in on that. Before I get you out of here, I have to ask, as a super ignorant American who became aware of Wrexham football

when Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhaney bought the club, are you guys fans of them? Are you guys fans of what they've done? Hell yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I follow Wrexham now. Yeah.

The football club has always been, like, the heart and soul of the town, obviously. Like, it's everything about Wrexham. So, like, we grew up with it and the stadium and, like, free tickets at school and stuff. But, yeah, since Rob and Ryan came in, it's pretty wild. Yeah. Nice. It's cool to be, like, proud of a town. It's cool to be proud of our town. We're always proud of our town, but nice to have something to brag about a little bit.

It's cool that you come out here now as well, and no one before that knew what Wrexham was or Wales or whatever, whereas now there's handfuls of people out here that are like, oh, Wrexham, Ryan and Rob. There's a lot of people in shirts and merch and stuff. There's some really bleak stories in English football about owners coming in and just, like, wrecking it and sending them into administration.

Like, Barry are no longer. So, like, they're institutions. And if you want to run a club properly, like, how they've done it at Wrexham is the example. But I guess it's easier when you're a movie star. Yeah. You know, when you've got the funds and a yeah you know when you got the funds to yeah people like them but it's they've brought the town up and i watched that's the

name of welcome to wrexham show and i you know see the people being like oh it's great but i didn't know if that was legitimate oh 100% them a little on the table yeah it's the pride of the town for sure they've come in and yeah we're on the up for the first time yeah they do seem like good guys they're funny they don't seem like super businessy guys you know they seem like pretty relatable but for the first time almost ever or in a long long time we've been able to say like rexham is you know rexham could be really sick in like in 10 years time it could actually be you know somewhere that people want to go so and that and a lot of that is down to them so yeah big up yeah all right my final question i ask to all the bands and musicians that come on our show um noel

gallagher once said he summed up everything he ever wanted to say with three songs live forever cigarettes and alcohol and rock and roll star he says after that he's just repeating himself with different words if you had to select three songs in your catalog that sum up everything you've ever wanted to say what would they be i'd say um maybe gold steps in terms of like a positive message and what that means and everything that would be one of them i think in bloom has got to be up there somewhere yeah i think in bloom in terms of like a a sonic feeling to it you know that song just feels really good and if we can conjure up the way that that song makes people feel i think we would have something special um and then as a final i would like to oh i'm kind of torn i'm kind of torn between roots and bricks i was gonna say roots too yeah probably say kind a couple of routes yeah just for um all the small town heroes

out there man just like it's so good to be able to sing about shitty little towns in a way that you know that i'm sure there's there's tons especially in the uk there's plenty of indie bands that sing about shitty shitty i think arctic monkeys do it incredibly well especially on their first couple records so um yeah for all the small town heroes and and the shitty places that get overlooked in the uk i would say we're champion the underdogs so yeah roots roots for sure for sure all right that was neck deep on my mom's basement go check them out on tour now there's a couple more tour dates in the u.s and you guys are about to play the biggest show of your career in London, right? Yes.

Yes. Alley Pally. If you're going to fly over, do it now because flights are expensive. If not, we'll see you there. There you go. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you, man.

Thanks.