Dead Neck and Actionmen talk about their punk split, “Defections”!

Back in April 2019, two amazing bands joined forces to reveal a punk split, titled “Defections”. Thanks to our good friend Seb at Mud Cake Records, Andy from Dead Neck and Diego from Actionmen were kind enough to answer a couple of questions for us 🙂 Check out what we talked about below!

Hello guys! Thanks for your time! For those who don’t know you yet, would you mind introducing your band to our readers?

Andy: Buenna serra! Noi siamo Dead Neck da l’Ingilterra, e bello essere qui.

Diego: Hello! we are Actiommen from Italy, we’re buzzing for being here!

The Defections Split is out since April 30th via Mud Cake Records. Who had the idea of ​​this split and why?

Andy: It was my idea, we’d toured together previously, Actionmen are my favourite band, still can’t believe they said yes.

Diego: That’s right, me and Andy met many years ago, and always stayed in touch since then… When he proposed us the split, we immediately accepted. Because we consider Dead Neck as one of the best punk rock bands around. One of the most active in touring around the world. And even if they changed a lot of members, all the various drummers and guitarists we met in the years were the best people with the best attitude!

How did you guys collaborate for this split?

Andy: We each sent five songs with the front and back cover of some artwork to Mud Cake Records and they did the rest.

Diego: Yes!

From the 5 songs you released on this split, which one is your favorite one and why?

Andy: Chorus of Die Tryin (when I lean…)

Diego: C’est Dada, one of the the thoughest and funniest songs to play we ever wrote…

The artwork is really sick! What’s the story behind this visual?

Andy: Mark Bell did our first EP and it was brilliant. He listened to the songs and came up with his own interpretation of the whole thing in a drawing. We asked him to do the same thing for the split, but gave him a title this time (Defections, Diego from Actionmen named it). We all love it.

Diego: I was thinking at Defections because at that time both bands were facing the changing of line up… I guess that in these years, that was  the concept of Dead Neck. Andy is the orthocenter of the band with members that, for the moment, come and go. A kind of artisticall nomadism, that is very facinating for many reasons.

Actionmen are exactly the opposite. We have been playing since 1999, me, Matteo and Libero with Pinna that joined few years later. The line up never changed in 18 years with the exceptions of Simo Perini on drums, that is by fact the 5th Actionmen at the time Andy invited us to join forces in the split. We were unfortunately left by Libero, the former lead singer. And we’re still facing the shocking news, trying to figure out how it could have been to play in trio, and picking up the pieces, emotionally speaking…

So at the time, speaking with Andy about both changing of line up, it came to me the word Defections… Not sure how it sounds in English, but to me, it sounded good…

Tell us one thing no one else knows about this record.

Andy: We’ve just come home from a 2 week tour around mainland Europe and sold our entire consignment of records from Mud Cake, both the split and the self-titled EP reissue. Result. Thanks everyone.

Diego: We recorded live in trio the instrumental parts of the songs, and recorded the vocals later on… Very difficult, but very funny!

Now that you guys have unveiled this split, can we expect an Actionmen / Dead Neck tour anytime soon?

Andy: We did eight gigs in Europe and the UK with them in 2015 and a tour of Japan in January 2018. We speak regularly about what each other are up to and what’s possible to play together, which still blows my mind. I think Actionmen should have every band in Europe asking them to tour with them. One of the guys has a new baby, but the band is still properly active and currently playing good festivals in Europe and regular gigs around Italy. We’re ready when they are to do something longer again.

Diego: We really hope that!! Actually, the Japan tour was organized to promote the split, but, as always, things took us more than we thought… So we really hope to tour again together. We are planning some gigs in Italy together this Fall!

Andy is too good with his words about us! Touring with Dead Neck and playing with punk rock bands from U.K, like Dead Neck, Fair Do’s, Darko, Almeida, Sombulance, The Human Project, is always ultra stimulating… They are all playing at the highest level, they are all incredible musicians (and lovely guys), and playing before or after them gives us extra adrenaline because we feel like we have to keep the level so high!!

Thanks for your time!

Andy: Nice one! 🙂

Diego: Ciaooo! 🙂