Rain in July is the Debut EP from Welsh pop punk five piece Neck Deep and we can honestly say we love every track! The album is a fantastic lament dealing with the subject of break ups and lost love.
The opening track is everything we wanted it to be. It introduces the band and tracks to come perfectly, transporting us to the front of a stage, lights blazing, fists pumping and music pounding.
“Silver Lining”, “What Did You Expect?”, “Over and Over” and “I couldn’t wait to leave 6 months ago” contain all the quintessential ingredients for great pop punk songs. In our opinion Bens vocals and lyrics make the album stand out against other debut releases. His voice is full of passion and raw emotion and combines quality singing with a sometimes pushing it into a crackly scream, which we love! His lyrics are fantastic, picking up on the emotions that everyone has been through. The rest of the band combine catchy guitar riffs, great chord progressions, little hooks and fast paced drumming.
Our favourite track is their acoustic number “A Part of Me” (ft. Laura Whiteside). A simple but amazing song, full of heart felt lyrics combined with Bens forcefully sung lyrics make this one of our favourite acoustic tracks ever. Laura Whiteside is a welcome addition to the track, flipping the lyrics around to an alternative perspective, showing the band not only think long and hard about their lyrics but have a clear direction on the delivery.
The EP is nothing ground breaking, but why should it be? It has everything we love about pop punk! From the sweet guitar riffs, to the heartbreak lyrics about the one that got away. Using a slightly lower tuning than standard gives it some thickness and it is a breath of fresh air to finally hear pop punk without the overproduced pop sound that has been given to us from a lot of todays mainstream bands.
Neck Deep have everything right with this flawless EP and we can’t wait to see what the next 12 months brings them following debut knockout, we only hope that the pop punk scene is going to pay close attention to these boys!
5/5
