Neck Deep's 'All Distortions are Intentional' is a Bit of a Faceplant

This is a perfect example of why I try to refrain from listening to too many singles when bands drop half their album a month ahead of its release date. I was super excited to hear new Neck Deep music… until the day Lowlife came out. From that point on, I was nothing short of skeptical about this entire album. That song is just such a faceplant failure in comparison to their greatest stuff, and it honestly worries me that it isn’t even the worst song on this album (cough cough Quarry cough), but I’m getting ahead of myself. After taking the Pop Punk universe by storm with arguably one of the most important and iconic albums in the genre of the 2010’s, it felt like Neck Deep could do no wrong in 2015. I didn’t discover the album until it’s greatest track Gold Steps was added to CSGO as a music kit funnily enough, but since then I’ve been totally in love with Life’s Not Out to Get You. It’s a lightning in a bottle Pop Punk record that despite bearing a handful of flaws still manages to feel like it’s done nothing wrong. It’s got perfect imperfections and plenty of iconic tracks galore to make up for all of them tenfold. Besides, even if every song sucked besides Gold Steps it would still be an automatic 8/10 record from that track alone. Since then, the band has been on a much softer and more mainstream trajectory. I’m far from one of the Neck Deep fans that hates on The Peace and the Panic, and in general I have nothing inherently against bands embracing the poppiest elements of their sound. That can often work out to give us some awesome music, for example records like Paramore’s After Laughter and Linkin Park’s Minutes to Midnight. While it seems to be almost taboo for Rock bands to “go Pop” with plenty of rabid gatekeepers labeling them as sellouts, I’ve never been against it and always want to give each new record a fair shot to impress me. However, this is a notable and obvious decline for reasons beyond the shift into full blown Pop Rock.

From the very first strum of album opener Sonderland, it’s abundantly clear that Neck Deep are going in a very different direction - even in comparison to their last record. The guitar tones throughout the album are significantly more jangly, loose and slightly even acoustic sounding in the kind of way that better emphasizes Pop Rock and Indie Rock songwriting. Those genre shifts don’t stop at the guitar tones either, because every element of this record bears little to no resemblance to the band’s last two albums. I genuinely would have believed this was an entirely different band if I wasn’t attempting to hype myself up for new Neck Deep over the last few months. Ben’s vocals sound like a different human being, which I’ll harp on later, and the songwriting is… we’ll say it’s like nothing they’ve done before. It’s not all bad though, as there are occasional moments that I found to be pretty special and memorable. That opener is one that I don’t hate, especially because of how it pushes the concept of the record so well by bringing in the idea of Sonder - the idea that every passerby leads a life as vibrant as your own. The transition from that track into Fall is one of the smoothest transitions I’ve heard all year too, which is partly responsible for how much I wound up enjoying the song. Fall winds up being a pretty great representation of what this record typically sounds like, but it’s got a solid hook, extremely tight production and that main clean guitar riff that’s just way too catchy. Others like Telling Stories and Sick Joke flex the band’s Pop Punk muscle just a tiny little bit, and while they both would’ve been too lighthearted to exist on any other Neck Deep record they work well here. Other than this though, the rest of the record honestly just doesn’t quite do it for me.

There are both fundamental, overarching issues with this album and smaller songwriting issues that just plague the entire thing from start to finish. To start with the smaller stuff, so often this album just doesn’t manage to hit the mark from a songwriting perspective and just winds up sounding like the kind of album that justifies the hatred some fans have for Poppier music. A lot of the better songs on this album actually have some cool ideas, but wind up being ruined by either Ben’s performance or a lack of flow that just breaks up the immersion in very unflattering ways. What Took You so Long is an example of both of those things, as Ben’s voice is particularly nauseating here (once again, I’ll get to it later) and the chorus just feels so anticlimactic. This feels like the kind of whitewashed, bland and particularly forgettable music you hear on mainstream Christian Contemporary Music radio. I doubt this is what Neck Deep was going for, but so much of this album would totally fit on KLUV with some different lyrics. It’s one thing to make more Pop oriented music, and it’s another thing to essentially make Pop Punk covers of the weakest material Switchfoot or Mercy Me has ever put out. Empty House is another one that just completely misses the mark for the same reasons with it’s painfully cheesy little electronic chorus sounding like some kind of sick joke (no pun intended). The “oh-oh-oh’s” in the verse, the little synth break before the chorus drops and the way the rest of the band completely wastes one of the coolest drum performances of the record is nothing short of pathetic. (By the way I just realized I forgot to say that the drumming on this album is one thing that’s consistently awesome, nobody told Dani Washington that the rest of the band was planning on sucking now.) The one thing a band needs when taking the risk of “going Pop” and potentially alienating their fanbase is songs that are strong enough that everybody will get behind them anyway. You’ve got to have your most killer material, and you’ve got to come across as extremely confident in that material if you want an album like this to succeed. However, this is Neck Deep’s workest material to date. Many of these songs are even more poorly written and forgettable than the band’s straightforward, run of the mill debut LP. This sounds like the opposite of growth, it sounds like regression.

It may already seem like I’ve got a bone to pick with this album, but I haven’t even gotten to the biggest problem. Ben Barlow’s vocals are getting an entire paragraph to themselves. What happened here? I mean seriously I’m struggling to believe that we aren’t listening to a computer processed clone of Ben instead of the actual guy. Like legitimately whatever it is that he’s doing on here has convinced me that he is nowhere close to the same musician that told me life isn’t out to get me all those years ago. When I say that there isn’t a slight presence of any kind of grit in his vocals, I don’t mean that as just an exaggerated way of saying his voice is more fitting for Pop music here. No, I mean there literally isn’t a single moment where his voice doesn’t sound cleaner than a sanitizer wipe. He sounds like somebody sprayed windex into his lungs and wiped them until they could see their reflection on the sides. Every line he delivers is the most overproduced, annoying and whiny sounding thing ever. He’s always had that signature Pop Punk whine that seemingly every singer in the genre has, which is fine and something I’ve grown to adore in the genre. Here though, he sounds like a small child trying to do an impression of himself. This actually might be my least favorite vocal performance I have ever heard from a notable Pop Punk vocalist. Billy Joe Armstrong on Father of All probably takes the cake if I’m being totally honest, but I’m not stretching the truth when I say that this comes close. I absolutely love Ben’s voice, but he sounds like he just phoned in all of his performances here and left it up to post to salvage them with tons of processing effects and other garbage. Nothing sounds human about what he brought to the table here. It sucks. Speaking of things that suck, the lyrics on this album are nothing short of elementary and juvenile so often. I haven’t mentioned Quarry yet, which I’m sure anyone who’s listened to this was expecting, and that’s because I waited until now. “That's S-T-R-E-S next to S - That's the root of it all and that's stress”. Ben turned mental health into a nursery rhyme. You can listen to this song yourself if you’re morbidly curious but that’s all I have to say. The only closing statement I will leave as far as the garbage lyrics go is this: “My colours, yellow and green, but I like some purple with my tangerine”. Come to your own conclusion on whatever that is.

I know I just tore this record a new one but I don’t actively despise it. It’s not good, actually it’s pretty far from good and rarely managed to leave any kind of impression on me, but it’s the kind of album that’s not worth me yelling about and going out of my way to hate. It’s just a disappointing, sad and really boring little album. It’s got a couple of good songs on it for sure, but there isn’t one moment on this album that gives me any kind of reason to listen to it over anything else the band has ever put out. I mean like actually there isn’t a single song on here that’s better than the worst songs off of their last two albums. It’s honestly a little bit sad that they didn’t even manage to soar to heights high enough that this album could even be considered worthy of their best work, but that’s where it’s at. There are a couple of songs I threw into my playlists, but to be honest part of me wonders that if anyone besides Neck Deep made this exact album I wouldn’t have done so. As a fan of the band, even at their lowest point, there’s a part of me that’s willing to find some enjoyment in even a low moment like this. I’m probably being much less harsh than somebody who has just stumbled across this band and heard this for the first time. There are so many more fantastic underground and unnoticed Pop Punk bands out there that are putting out way better material than this, so if this was Neck Deep’s underground debut I promise you nobody would’ve given them a second passing glance. This band is full of fantastically talented musicians and I expect better next time. I know they can do whatever they want and I’m just some clown typing about them on the internet, but seriously they are in a make or break position right now where if their next record is worse than this they will start bleeding fans exponentially. Check out the new Stand Atlantic album on August 2nd, it’s shaping up to be way better than this. Iconic Pop Punk band Neck Deep has officially reached their lowest point to date with All Distortions are Intentional, an album that’s so lacking in identity (and memorable songs) that I can’t see myself coming back to it. I’m all for bands going in a more Pop direction if they’ve got the songwriting chops to back it up, but this is just a divebomb in quality in comparison to the band’s fantastic last two records. It’s got a couple of alright songs and I’ve got hope they can bounce back, but this one was pretty rough. - 5.1/10 (Best Songs - Fall, Telling Stories, Sick Joke)