Last Friday, Wrexham pop-punk greats Neck Deep introduced fans to the fascinating world of Sonderland via new single Lowlife, and the announcement of their highly-anticipated fourth record, All Distortions Are Intentional.
To coincide with this huge news, the band – brothers Ben and Seb Barlow, Dani Washington, Matt West and Sam Bowden – hit the cover of Kerrang! this week for a very special interview about everything that's coming our way within this conceptual new sound and place.
And while 'Sonderland' plays a huge role in the narrative of album number four, with one of the record's central characters, Jett, living there, frontman Ben explains that the band decided against using this word as the LP's title.
“We realised [Sonderland] pigeonholed the record a bit, putting too much of a focus on the fantastical setting than the characters involved,” he admits, though Sonderland is nevertheless the name of the album's opening track.
“All Distortions Are Intentional came from the artist who ended up doing the cover [Tom Noon]. We were flipping through his stuff, and he had a piece with that name, and I thought it sounded sick. It’s a statement that plays into the record in a lot of ways. Our understandings and misunderstandings in life happen for a reason, and in our journey from point A to point B there are a lot of emotional fluctuations, which are all part of the bigger picture. This is an album of drastic juxtapositions and creative choices that might not all make sense right off the bat, but they are intentional.”