Neck Deep will perform at this year’s UK Warped Tour in November, and have revealed the working title for their forthcoming full-length album as Wishful Thinking.
Furthermore, the band has announced that the tentatively-titled album will be released in “very early 2014″ via an “as yet unrevealed label”. The band will also release a single from it in November to coincide with the Warped Tour.
03 Jun
Toronto’s Harbour are streaming their new EP ‘All My Exes Are Dead To Me’ on their Bandcamp page, and it’s well worth checking out.
14 May
The Wonder Years return with The Greatest Generation, a powerful and occasionally surprising follow-up to 2011′s Suburbia, I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing.
There hasn’t been a release in recent memory carrying such crushing weight of expectation as The Greatest Generation, but the Pennsylvania pop punk realists have not buckled.
The Wonder Years hyped the album as their most important material to date, and the result is nothing less than was promised – a collection of songs bursting with passion, heartache, anxiety and optimism.
07 May
Ten years ago this week, a small Chicago band with a local following released an album that would change the course of pop punk. That band was Fall Out Boy, the album was their seminal debut; Take This To Your Grave.
The year was 2003 and my stereo was playing The Starting Line’s Say It Like You Mean It, Something Corporate’s Leaving Through The Window and various other Drive Thru Records artists.
Broadband Internet was only just being rolled out in the UK, so as a 17 year old with a crappy Internet connection, I got my news and reviews from magazines.
While Kerrang! was (and still is) too ‘flavour of the week’ to introduce me to anything new, UK magazine Rock Sound carried a short review, perhaps no more than 150 words, on Fall Out Boy’s Take This To Your Grave.
Two things caught my attention: the Simpsons reference and the phrase “pop punk with heavy undercurrents”.
02 May
Sometimes I’ll only have to listen to the first 30 seconds of an album to know I’m going to love the rest of it. Harbour’s All My Exes Are Dead To Me was one of those albums.
The Toronto pop punk outfit has put together a four-track EP bursting at the seams with hooks, riffs and those oh-so-bitter lyrics and themes we all love so much, whether we care to admit it or not.
All My Exes Are Dead To Me is written and arranged with a maturity you wouldn’t necessarily expect, given its title.
Opener, In Her Words is a high energy, interesting and well-written introduction to the band, its themes and sound. Both here and in other parts of the EP I’m reminded of my first listen to Fall Out Boy’s Take This To Your Grave.
Great harmonies in both vocals and guitars complement well-crafted hooks.
Track two Everything That I’m Not has one of the best chorus hooks I’ve heard while reviewing unsigned pop punk bands. Imagine an RX Bandits melody over Fall Out Boy guitars being sung by The Used’s singer.
I found this track stuck in my head long before I learned to words to be able properly sing it.
The eponymous track All My Exes Are Dead To Me has a hell of a hook, even if some may find its chorus’ lyrics cliched. Whatever, I like it.
Closer Better Days has, for my money, the perfect bass sound. The verse’s baseline is hella cool. There are shades of the Madden Brothers’ vocals in the bridge, replete with delay effect.
A great chorus, a break down which isn’t just there for the sake of it and a catchy-as-hell refrain combine to make another decent track.
All in all, I’m left wanting to hear more. I’m most hooked by Harbour’s faster tracks, but when their slower verses feature that bass tone, I’m not complaining.
I feel like I get over excited about unsigned pop punk bands sometimes, and that it lessens the impact when I say something like this…
Harbour need to be on your radar, and a label should snatch these guys up fast.
by Hike Mellem
"do its my words. actually, I was expecting a more pop punk sound. Tom still unable to separate blink-182, angels ..."by brittany
"Wow, I really loved this song! It did remind me a lot of Jimmy Eat World >w< keep up the /awesome/ ..."
17 Jun
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