Thursday, 27 February 2014

Acoustic Motion City Soundtrack Cover

Watch members from Real Friends, Candy Hearts, Modern Baseball and Stick Up Kid cover 'When You're Around' by Motion City Soundtrack...

Neck Deep to Play UK Shows In April

Neck Deep will be playing some UK shows around their appearances at Hit the Deck Festival this April.
Check out the dates below:

Buy Tickets here.

Tuesday, 25 February 2014

Pop Punk's Not Dead Tour: What's in Store For Us?


After the news that the Pop Punk's Not Dead Tour is hitting the UK in November, we thought we'd look back to the 2011 run in the US to see what we have in store for us. After Chad Gilbert promised that they'd organise something for the UK two years ago, we're thinking it will definitely be worth the wait.

Pop Punk's Not Dead US Tour
The Pop Punk's Not Dead Tour was set up in the US to showcase bands within the pop punk genre that New Found Glory wanted to give more exposure to. The line up in 2011 consisted of Set Your Goals, This Time Next Year, Man Overboard and the Wonder Years and was, of course, headlined by New Found Glory. The band wanted to give younger bands the same recognition that they were given in the early part of their career when they were in the same position. Steve Klein (who's no longer part of the band) said of the tour in an interview with Absolute Punk: '“When we started out, Less Than Jake, Blink-182 and Green Day and bands like that took us on tour and they all helped us out. We’re just trying to pass it down. I feel with us, we’ve gone through all the crap you could go through as far as managers, labels, press people, whatever. We talk to the younger bands and try to give them advice on what is a good or bad way to go about things.”The US tour ran for nearly 2 months and played in 35 cities. 


Now, the tour's coming to the UK with probably the same objectives; to give more exposer to newer bands such as Candy Hearts (who Chad Gilbert works with closely) and Ireland's own Only Rivals. Check out the UK tour dates here

Watch Man Overboard's time on the PPND tour in 2011:

Pop Punk's Not Dead Tour Comes To UK

New Found Glory, The Story So Far, Candy Hearts and Only Rivals will be heading to the UK this November on the Pop Punk's Not Dead UK tour. More guests will be announced this May. Pre Sale tickets go on sale here. 
General Sale starts this Friday. 

Check out the dates below:

Thursday, 20 February 2014

Knuckle Puck Release Fences


Knuckle Puck have released the second song from their upcoming split with Neck Deep. The band have already released the first song Gold Rush (listen to it here) and have now released Fences. You can preorder the split from Knuckle Puck's Band camp before the official release date on February 25th. 



Tuesday, 18 February 2014

As It Is Interview

Brighton's As It Is are releasing their their fan funded E.P, This Mind of Mine, on March 17th. They've already released a video, Can't Save Myself, tracks Bitter Broken Me and Horoscopes from the E.P (which you can listen to here) and they're sounding pretty great. Here, Ben kindly talks to us about the new E.P, festivals, Barack Obama and their new video...

What are your top five favourite pop punk albums?
 Take This To Your Grave - Fall Out Boy
Stay What You Are - Saves The Day
The Greatest Generation - The Wonder Years
New Found Glory - New Found Glory
Dookie - Green Day

I’d have said Brand New, Taking Back Sunday or The Early November but they aren’t really all that pop punk.

Who are your musical influences?
 I think collectively New Found Glory brought us all together in the beginning and definitely influenced us at the start. In regards to what we wrote for This Mind of Mine, I’d say Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday and Brand New have been massive influences. 

If you could have As It Is play with any band who would you pick?
 We’ve all discussed this one again come to the conclusion as a band of New Found Glory because of the connection we all have with that band. I’d love to play alongside Brand New one day though. 

How did As it Is form?
 Patty and Andy had known each other from a previous project that never worked out and Patty met me on the same course at uni. He had patches of bands I loved on his backpack so I knew we’d get on musically. We auditioned our drummer Foley and we all quickly became best friends with a real love for the music we wrote. We’re technically just a 4-piece at the moment but we have a bassist live.

If you could play at a UK festival this year what one would you pick?
 Foley really wants to play Slam Dunk. He actually once said that he’d get my face tattooed on his penis if we didn’t play it in 2013. We didn’t in the end but I can confirm that he (sadly) hasn’t got that tattooed.

Since you often get described as a transatlantic band who would you rather have dinner with, the Queen or Barack Obama?
 Having dinner with Obama would be way more of a laugh! Although I’d probably end up getting kicked out for laughing at the fact he had a Zune, remember them? 

Do you get the pop punk pizza thing? What does it mean? Please help us understand this concept?
 I don’t get it like a load of other people do, don’t get me wrong I love pizza, but I feel it’s stereotyping. I feel like the connection is just a parody of itself now. I blame Tumblr. 

If you could play anywhere in the universe where would it be?
 In the universe? Still probably Japan. Or Mexico, I hear shows are great there on almost every tour documentary I watch.

How did you approach the writing process for your new E.P This Mind of Mine?
 We wrote together rather than writing ones alone and bringing them to practice. We all swapped instruments and tried to be as creative as possible. I think we managed to find a way of writing songs that all of us loved and felt involved in.

How did you pick the artwork for This Mind of Mine?
 The artwork derives from lyrics on the EP. The book, the heart and the coffin all relate to the last three lyrics on the last song. Once we had the concept we knew we wanted it drawn and me and Patty both have a few tattoos from a girl called Dolly Plunkett in Brighton who we asked to draw the concept in her style. We also wanted to contrast the dark lyrics with bright colours on the front, because that’s kinda what we’re like; seemingly colourful and boldly confident on the outside, but miserable on the inside. 


How would you say This Mind of Mine is different to Blenheim Place?
 More coherent. We’re still proud of those songs but I feel we tried to represent a wide variety of pop punk on Blenheim Place. With This Mind of Mine we had figured out how we write best and I think definitely found our own sound. We wrote songs that we would want to listen to rather than trying to fit in aspects of pop punk we thought ‘had’ to be there.  

What’s your favourite track from This Mind of Mine?
 Relive The Story. It’s the most different to anything we’ve done. It’s a bit slower. It’s the quietest and loudest song and I’m super proud of the lyrics that both Patty and I wrote for that one. Shit gets dark. Trivia - it almost didn’t make the cut but we definitely made the right decision keeping it.

You recently released a video for Cant’s Save Myself was that fun to film?
 It was hot. We were all pretty sweaty by the end. But it was fun, I think we were all a bit sick of the song by the end. The director Ian is a good friend of ours so it was really easy to be ourselves. I think there might be a behind the scenes video soon so everyone can see what it was like for themselves.

Is the boy in the video a family member/friend?
 Haha no - actually he’s a regular customer in the coffee shop I work in. He had the right hair, was always well behaved and confident so I asked his mum and that was that sorted.

With a Youtuber in the band and As it Is going on tour soon, does this make it easier to record all of your tour memories and shows?
 I guess so, We all want to film everything we do as much as possible anyway. What it does mean is that we are better at the way we use YouTube and do our social media. He’s taught us a lot about the way the internet works.

Where do you see yourselves by the end of this year? Do you have any specific goals?
 Being tired. We just want to tour and play as many shows as possible this year. We have some exciting things in the works that we can’t talk about yet. I think our main goal is to still be friends. That’s what’s most important to us.

Who are your favourite UK bands at the minute? 
 Gnarwolves, ROAM and obviously Neck Deep are slaying it at the moment.

Can't Save Myself: 

Monday, 17 February 2014

Midtown Reunite


Midtown are reuniting for Skate and Surf Festival. In a instagram video Gabe Saporta sang that Midtown were reuniting for the festival. However, there is no news of yet as to whether the band will play more shows or festivals. We're keeping our fingers crossed.