Interviews

Ben Barlow - Neck Deep 'Very Proud To Be The Biggest UK Pop Punk Band'

Georgia Haskins

Mar 31, 2025

8 min read

Trudging through the muddy fields of Warped Tour, to now reflecting a more refined sense of sound, Neck Deep have wandered through every facet of the pop punk scene. Their journey has seen them slaughter every new challenge faced with a strong sense of pride, leaving their signature upon everything they touch, and ensuring their name remains engraved for years to come. Now, the band finds themselves at their self-proclaimed creative peak, touring with an album that is not merely self-titled, but entirely self-made… and it’s hitting our shores in a couple of weeks!

I was lucky enough to sit down with my hero of many years, the loud and proud frontman, Ben Barlow, for a chat on creativity, the beauty of the Notes app, and of course, ten years of Life’s Not Out To Get You!

Watch the interview below, or read on...

Neck Deep and Australia have such an inextricable connection. I was there when you guys first debuted your ‘Torn’ cover, which, of course, Natalie Imbruglia is an Australian icon. Not to mention you guys were here in the year of 2023. What is it that makes you love coming back to our Shores?

Yeah! The 'Torn' cover was surprisingly [well received]. We did not expect that to do as well as it did but it did and it is a banger. We don't intend to play it live too much these days, but when we do crack out, it is fun.

But the thing that keeps us coming back to Aus is, and I've been saying, it's just the people and the place. The shows are awesome as well, and that's the caveat, and that's the reason we're there, obviously. The prime objective is to play a good show. So we don't have to worry about that. And so, yeah, it's just the people and the place. It's just beautiful. It's somewhere that I want to be or I want to travel outside of music, too, and go there with my wife and show her that part of the world because, yeah, it's beautiful, both the people and the place. It really is a beautiful place.

And things generally seem... I mean, I know, I know. Every country has its own issues with society, politically or whatever, but generally, being compared to the UK and the US, things seem a little bit more chill out in Aus for sure. So, yeah, it's nice to go somewhere that isn't so on edge. It definitely is nice and relaxing being there for sure. And we get looked after so, so well when we're out there as well. It is truly no cap, one of our favourite places to tour in the world.

That's lovely. Obviously, this time around, you're celebrating the self-titled album, which was a major milestone for you guys. This album, it was labelled as the most creative control you've had to date. What does creative control mean for you guys? Did it mean more late nights in unprofessional settings, or did it mean unlearning all the stuff you'd learned from the other albums? How did music once again belong to you?

Good question. Well, I think it's more to do with… It's maybe an unseen thing that maybe fans don't get to see as much. But a lot of bands choose to work with producers, and a lot of artists tend to work with producers. The role of a producer can be many things. Sometimes they're incredibly beneficial to a record if you click with that person or if the person gets what you're doing and can contribute to what you want to do. But then sometimes you can come across, you can go and write with people or make a record with people, and it just doesn't really click. The magic's not really there. The vibes are just awful. Even just your environment is a huge factor in that, too.

I think as a young band, when we were working with producers, we were learning a lot and we were willing to take a lot of guidance. But then the older and more experienced we've got, the more we've learned about ourselves and our sound and how we like to make music and what we do and don't want to do. Sometimes people aren't always going to get that. The only people that can really define your sound truly or represent your sound truly is ultimately going to be you and the band.

When I said it was the most creative control we've had, it was because we did everything. Other than record drums, we went elsewhere to record drums. But in terms of the writing and the track and guitar, vocals, and mixing and master, it was ours. All the decisions were on us, whether the album was good or whether it was bad. It was all on us. I think we enjoyed doing it that way.

It allowed us to make the most Neck Deep sounding record that we could have made with no outside influence, with no wrestling for creative control or not having to wrestle ideas from people. We were just the masters of our own destiny in that respect.

I think It was the best thing for us at that time. It's not to say that we'll never work with a producer again. Absolutely not. We could definitely work with a producer, but sometimes that doesn't work. And Yeah, it was just we took control of our art and our product. EW “product”! God, that's such a bad word for music… for our art. And, yeah, that ultimately made a record that we were happy with before anything else. And I think that's crucial. If the band isn't stoked on it, then fans aren't going to be stoked on it. So yeah, that was the best decision we could have made, I think. And having that creative control just meant that we made the record that we wanted to make.

You say that it is the most Neck Deep sounding record that you've made. And obviously the title carries that a little bit. I want to know, though, did you first go into the record knowing it would be a self-titled record, or did you make all the songs, they asserted themselves, and then you're like, this has to be called Neck Deep?

Yeah, I'd say that's the process. Sometimes a record title just jumps out of you and you know that it’s the record title. That happened with All Distortions Are Intentional. I saw it on a painting and was just like, that sounds like an album title. Let's do that. But then this one felt right. We were throwing album names around, and there were a few good ones. But then when the self-titled was suggested, for all the reasons we just talked about, that just seemed to make sense. I think every band's got a self-titled, and if it fits and if it's the time to do it, let's make it a self-titled, let's go!

Now, we're speaking of all the new album. I want to jump right back to the flaming Neck Deep logo, the era of weird pizza pop punk, and 2015 Warped Tour. When you look back then, did you ever think the legacy, acclaim, and most of all, longevity of your band would ever be what it is today?

No! Although I knew that was right on the cusp! Life's Not Out To Get You… we knew we'd made a good record with that, and we knew just based on what we were getting on some of the first singles and stuff that it was going to be good. That was definitely a very exciting time. Whether or not we would have been successful, whether or not it would have lasted forever, that was just such a green and prosperous time for us.

I've mentioned this a few times, and it's a quote that does stick with me, but it's a Kurt Cobain bit where he says, “The most exciting time in a band's career is when they're about to blow up, but they don't know it”. That was what that was. It's true because you have no expectations, you have no overwhelming commitments or you've got way less pressure on you to succeed and to follow up a record or anything like that. It is just a very exciting time to be a band. They were exciting times for us for sure because it was right before we blew up.

In a lot of people's eyes, they probably would have thought we had already blown up by then, but that's when properly, we really asserted ourselves. It was an exciting time. It was very, very fun. I look back very fondly on those times.

I think you very much undersold Life's Not Out To Get You there. It's one of the best albums ever. It's my favourite album of all time.

Really? Oh, fucking amazing! Thank you.

It's soon celebrating its 10th birthday. We're in the renaissance of rejuvenation with people redoing things or even celebrating. Are there any plans to spectacularly celebrate the album that did a lot for you?

I think we're going to be doing some stuff at home and maybe in America for it just because it's a little bit easier to make it happen.

But in Aus, we're probably going to throw some deep-cut Life’s Not Out To Get You stuff. We'll do a small celebration where we'll play the best of that record, we feel like.

Yeah, we'll play the best of that record because it's an important record for us; a really big record for us. But we don't want to lean too heavily on the nostalgia thing. We don't want to pigeonhole. We don't want to corner ourselves as a legacy band just yet because we’ve got so much in the tank still. We know we've got a lot more albums to write and a lot more growing to do. We don't want to look to the past too much.

We don't want to pigeonhole ourselves or we don't want it to become a gimmick. We want it to be special. And we want it to be a thing of if you're there and you can get to these anniversary shows or whatever it may be, then that's it. That's how it is. But we are going to do some cool stuff stuff around the anniversary for international fans. Maybe not so much shows, but there'll be some cool stuff for sure. And we'll be playing a little bit more Life’s Not Out To Get You stuff than we usually would.

Yeah, there will be a nice celebration of it, but we just don't want to lean too hard into it. We'll save that for the 20 year. I feel like 20 years is more substantial than 10 years. So yeah, we'll shine a nice light on it, but I don't think we're going to lean on it too heavily.

Well, in 20 years, I'll still be there first in line. That's totally fine.

Hey, we're all going to be here, it's all chill.

I do want to talk about your live show a little bit, because obviously, the Neck Deep live experience is just an emotional roller coaster. I've gone from crying so hard, security guards laughed at me, to then crowdsurfing in the next song. It's so much energy. I guess for you, has this energy ever shifted the way you've thought about a song? Was there maybe a song you were disconnected to or something from the new albums you didn't like that much, but seeing how people were singing and responded made you change your tone on it?

That's a really good question! I can't really think of a song specifically that does that live. But there's definitely stuff like that in a studio where, not even necessarily just me, but as a band, we can be like, “I don't know about this song”. And you chip away it, and you chip away it. And it's only when fans hear it and respond to it that you're like, “Oh, holy shit”.

So a song, I think, that sticks out for me with that. Well, there are two actually that I can think of. ‘December’. We really battled with that song. It went from being a full band song to being an acoustic song to then being… And now we play a full band version of it and stuff. We weren't sure with that song a little bit. We were just like, “Who is it? I don't know. Is it good? I don't know. I think it's good. We'll put it on there”. The response to that song was just, yeah, crazy. It’s one of our biggest songs. But then the other one was, ‘Can't Kick Up The Roots’. Because initially with that song we thought it sounded a little bit like nursery-rhymey and a little bit jovial. But then when we started playing it live, it was like, Oh, shit. Okay. People really relate to the sentiment of this song, and it does have an awesome energy to it, and it's got some awesome lyrics to it. So ‘December’ and ‘Roots’ were two of those songs.

I think as well, if it wasn't for maybe Jeremy McKinnon and Andrew Wade, who we made that record with, who were that… going back to what the role of a producer… should be. The producer should be the sixth band member thing. ‘Rock Bottom’ was another one, and then even one now, it's not the best, but still. But if we didn't have Jeremy and Wade saying “No, these are good songs! Trust me. Trust me. Let's see them through, see them through”, then we probably wouldn't have. So, yeah, those are the ones that spring to mind, I think.

That's incredibly interesting. And it's good to know a perspective. And the fact that both are off that album is also very telling.

Yeah, yeah. Well, we were young. We didn't know what fans wanted or what they would respond to. So I think as we've grown and evolved, we know what works. We've got a good formula going. It doesn't happen so much these days. But I mean, I would be revealing too much if I said any more. There might be a case of that soon, I guess, but we'll see!

‍Jumping to more recent news. You were nominated as the Best UK Artist for The Heavies. Obviously, that's a massive achievement. So congratulations on that first. But I wanted to throw back, or even to now, what do you think the most pivotal part or the thing that stuck with you most about growing up in the UK punk scene, whether it be something back then or now? How has it shaped you?

I was pulled into punk rock from a young age. I was pretty young. Me and Seb [Barlow - bassist] had our older brother. He was a huge punk, and so we've had it for a long time, and it's always been a part of our lives. I really can't remember or imagine a time before it.

But in the UK, the punk scene is incredibly strong. Some of the most famous and most iconic punk bands from your traditional punk, even to now, with hardcore punk, which is the form that it's taken. There's so many up-and-coming bands from the UK that are just absolutely killing it. And so, yeah, the UK has flown the flag for punk rock for a long, long time, and I do think it is built into our DNA. And while we're pop punk and it's not necessarily straight-up punk. It's punk-adjacent. It's an offshoot of punk. It was only a matter of time before the UK produced a decent pop-punk band.

I am in no way comparing ourselves to The Beatles, trust me. But the way that they did, they basically were like a skiffle band before that, but then they started playing rock and roll, which is an American thing, and they almost went and did the American thing better than the Americans were doing, and the American music scene lost their shit about it. And there was a similar thing, I think, when we came out, because it was “This is an American thing. What are you doing”? I think we put our own unique twist on it.

I think UK's musical history has a long track record of doing that, of being inspired by other genres or having other cultures' music infused into our culture and us making it into our own thing. I think that's very similar to what we did. But the punk scene has always been strong. We had a good scene growing up when we were younger. It died out, unfortunately, after venues and promoters ended up closing and moving on. But had we not had that, had I not grown up going to watch Seb and my older brother playing bands and get to know the local music scene and the people within that. Again, I don't think that we would be a band either. We probably do have a lot to owe to the UK being our home country and that heritage and that history and that focus that comes with all that is put on you being a British band. People expect good things out of British bands because we have such a rich musical history. It's one of the few things I'm proud of as a Brit.

I think it's built into our DNA and I'm very, very proud to be, without tooting my own horn, but I think the biggest UK pop punk band there's ever been. I don't know! That's what I've been told. So yeah, very proud of that fact. And I do think being from where we're from has played a role in that for sure.

Just to finish it off and maybe bring it back a bit homegrown, we started on the note of covers with your ‘Torn’ cover. Of course, we have Triple J's Like A Version, which is very prolific. If you were to do that with Neck Deep when you were here, what song would you do?

Damn, I'm always looking for songs to cover…

*Exits off Zoom and makes his way to his Notes app*

or I'll occasionally make notes if I think that's a good song to cover. And so let me try and find in my fucking absolute slew of notes that I've got on my phone that I did have a little list of covers. I've got some insane notes in here. I've got band/EP name, ‘Nipple Cripple’! I was probably very high when I wrote that. I was like, “that'd be a funny band name”. Man, there was one that came up recently that I was like, “that would be a fucking sick cover to do”. Let me see. Can you search notes? Yes, you can! Cover ideas! Here we go. Here you go! Boom.

Cooking with gas!

This is the song that we should have done for ‘Torn’ because the thing was, “songs that saved my life” and genuinely, a song I think maybe did save my life was ‘Save Your Scissors’ by City and Colour. I think we could do a really cool version of that. It's got a nice twinkly lead that we could turn into something a little bit more drivey. The other one was Bon Iver, ‘Flume’. I just think I could add a really expansive chorus to it. I'd probably say ‘Save Your Scissors’ by City and Colour.

But I know I've had better ones since then. I know it's in there somewhere for sure. But that jumps to mind. And that was an important song to me. City and Colour was a big influence on me when I started writing songs.

Well, if the experience somehow comes to fruition, I'm claiming a little bit of it.

Hey, start nailing them on social media. Get us in for a version. That would be great.

Interview by Georgia Haskins @ghaskins2002

Neck Deep return to inject pop punk goodness across Australia with State Champs and LATE 90s

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