Review: Neck Deep’s self-titled released via TB and Hopeless
On their sixth full-length Neck Deep do what they set out to do and they do it well. Every single track here is huge in a way only Warped tour was huge. Infectious riffs, catchy choruses, maybe a quip or vulgarity to make it really stick in your teenage mind. We even do blink-182 double time on “Sort Yourself Out,” the second track where all these things are in their strongest form. It’s big, it’s attachable to nostalgia, it’s attachable to almost anybody. You probably know someone who is more than a little messy and has made you feel put out at one point or another.
Frontman Ben Barlow has become a really good lyricist by making pop punk lyrics as relatable as possible without leaning into toxic masculinity. He writes in the same way he probably talks, there’s a tinge of sarcasm but it’s always believable. Granted, he also sneaks in some Facebook-isms like emphasizing he’s “so sick of this planet” on “Take Me with You.”
And to be honest it’s not really much to do with fucking flowers
When you stay up for hours doing nothing
Fucking drank all my kambucha
Play dumb just cause it suits ya
Sort yourself out
To me what stops this project from being great is all these strong pop punk songs is all the record actually is. Neck Deep already proved to me they were capable of being this band on 2020’s All Distortions Are Intentional. It had all the sonics, yes, but it also had variety. It also had a fairly compelling concept and storyline which worked similarly for other bands from past decades who went for this exact appeal; see American Idiot, see The Black Parade. And not to make comparisons but it's all drawing from those bands anyway, with or without me to criticize it. “They May Not Mean To” is basically a New Found Glory song, Ben name drops a Modern Baseball album on the second to last track here. I do think basically all these songs will be fun on my playlist all year long, but repeated listens of the album itself already feel stale around the midway point.
Our score of Neck Deep is 7/10.
Our favorite track is track 2, Sort Yourself Out.
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