Review Summary: All hype, no heart.
Well, this revival of pop punk was fun for the short time it lasted. It happens to every genre 'scene'. A few solid bands get popular and the entire genre becomes saturated with tons of generic ripoffs (see post-hardcore/metalcore since ~2006). Enter new pop punk phenomenon Neck Deep, a blatant ripoff of
The Story So Far. Ben Barlow steals Parker Cannon's vocal delivery and lyrical content, and Neck Deep steals The Story So Far's stage presence, down to their clothing. It's not like pop punk is an innovative genre to begin with, but there's no uniqueness on this EP; in fact, every song is void of personality.
Rain in July starts out decently enough with opener "Kick It". And it's all downhill from there. The remaining songs range from unmemorable ("Silver Lining") to pointless ("All Hype, No Heart") to god awful ("A Part of Me"). Ben Barlow can't sing, and it makes these songs even harder to get through. Need proof? Watch "A Part of Me" acoustic @ www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkbSlPH95nE where he struggles with singing his own song, in a lower key than it's recorded in, no less. The ratio for likes to dislikes is 40:1, so along with having bad taste in music, Neck Deep fans must be tone deaf. His lyrics are vapid and occasionally cringeworthy, like in "What Did You Expect?" (
You went and fucked this up 'cause you couldn't keep your legs shut) or literally the entire song "A Part of Me". Unlike Ben Barlow, the rest of the band isn't offensive, just painfully generic.
This is the product of a band capitalizing on the latest trend... and it's working. They shouldn't be getting as popular as they are. Apparently there's no quality control on Tumblr and the users promote every pop punk band who fits into the scene. Stop it.
