Interviews (256)

• July 17, 2026
• Colleen Johnson
• 15
• 0

With loads of new music coming out today, I knew to jump on the opportunity to chat with the UK’s As It Is, when I heard their new self-titled album was coming out today. I was happy to see that Ben Biss was who I’d be chatting with from the band, considering he was the first member to originally step away from the band for personal reasons,  but his return to the band came in 2024, when he first reached back out to the band’s vocalist, Patty Walters. Who even took his own step back from the band for a while. The band has never been shy about the importance of mental health (I had an in-depth conversation with the band back in 2019 touching on that topic, which can be found here), so to hear that the band was coming back together as the unit they were eight years ago, was something we knew we had to cover for the site!

You can find my chat below with Ben about their new album, his first back with the band since pre-pandemic, and the one the band chose to be their self-titled. While the band hasn’t announced any US dates besides a one-off at American Dream Mall in New Jersey, this album will hopefully propel them to a return Stateside. For now, find our chat below, and if you’re in the UK, the band has announced a slew of dates for England, the first being tonight!

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New England Sounds: Currently, there’s a lot going on. Your self-titled album is about to come out. I know it’s a bit of a sour point, but you were supposed to have a support tour you were on that got canceled, so now you’ve kind of had to jump on your feet and figure it out. How are you feeling about these upcoming shows, considering how quickly they came together? 

Ben Biss: Yeah, it was a stressful couple of weeks, trying to sort out what we were going to do instead. But yeah, we made it work. We’ve added a couple of extra shows, and ultimately, we just kind of are excited to get to play these new songs in front of people and see them connect. Because when we went out to Europe, “Live, Laugh, Love” had only been out a couple of days, and the reaction to that was great. So I’m anticipating that even though some of the shows, the first show is on release day, I guarantee you some of the people will have been listening to the album all day on the way there, and will somehow know the words. I don’t understand sometimes, like “How do you know the words already?” So, no, feeling good. There were a couple of weeks of feeling a little disjointed and just sad about the situation. But we made the most of it. 

NES: Then I know, you stepped away from the band for a little bit; there was obviously even Patty stepping away from the band for a bit, but I know you reached out to him and kind of started a conversation again. But I know the first song written took a year, from the conversations to finishing it. But when did you really sit down and start working on these songs? 

Ben: Well, before even that, we just kind of sat down as friends. We all just kind of went to a pub up in Brighton. You know, we all live in different areas of the UK now. We all kind of met up, just to hang out, really, because it had been so long. And at that point in time, we didn’t know whether we would do a band again. At that point, we didn’t even know whether we could logistically do the band again. But it just kind of naturally happened. We were kind of like, well, why don’t we just get in a room and see what happens? Whether it’s as As It Is, whether it’s a new project, whatever it is. We just liked each other’s company, and ultimately, looking back, all of us just needed a break at the time. We had just kind of all staggered at different points. I was the first to go, but I think everyone clung on a little longer. I think looking back, everyone could have done with taking a break and then coming back to it. And the irony of it is, like I quit the band maybe two, three months before Covid hit. So looking back, I was like, I would have kind of gotten that break anyway. 

NES: Yeah, one that you didn’t ask for. 

Ben: Yeah, I guess that’s the difference, isn’t it? It’s not a break that you were in control of, so maybe it would have felt differently It’s always easy to make those jokes and think that’s how it kind of would have gone, but I think yeah, we all just needed to live our own lives for a bit. As we basically had done eight years of touring non-stop, and yeah, we’re grateful that we kind of got the space. Got to really plant some kind of roots in our own lives, and stuff, and be healthier for it. And as a result, now we can do the band in a much healthier way. In a much more sustainable way. 

NES: It kind of reminds me of when I know they’ve obviously been back now for years, but when Fall Out Boy kind of stopped for a bit. And I remember they were doing interviews, and Patrick (Stump) wanted to try something new, and the second that he called Pete (Wentz), he was like, “Can we be friends again?” And immediately, Pete was like, “Yep, where do we go?” 

Ben: It was so easy. It was like a night and day had passed. The fact that we don’t tour as much, now we just get to like look forward to it more, and it gets to be a really special thing when we do it. In that way that you mentioned, I think if we ever needed a break again or anything, we wouldn’t necessarily even say anything, but it wouldn’t be like going on hiatus. We would just need to not tour for a bit, it wouldn’t be that the band is broken up. We would just need some downtime, and I think that’s okay. I think there’s a lot of pressure, especially now, in this algorithmic hellscape, to be constantly going. In order to maintain relevency or anything. But I think we are fortunate; we feel really grateful that we got to be a band before social media became quite the way it is. You know, when we first started, Spotify wasn’t even a thing. And playlists weren’t quite really a thing. Because of that, I think we kind of afforded ourselves if we just want not to do it for a bit. We can, and we know that the fans that really care about us will be there when (laughs) we’re ready to do it again. We’re always really grateful for that. 

NES: How has that kind of been to have that element, social media, and creating content? How has that experience been for you guys? 

Ben: I find it kind of funny in a way, because obviously when we started, Patty had his YouTube, and as a result of Patty doing YouTube covers at the time, that wasn’t really taken seriously as a legit way in. That was like the equivalent of being called an industry plant now, whatever that means. But that was the equivalent of that at the time. And now that’s kind of just what everyone does, and in an even more throwaway content kind of way. Like I do all our social media, and I have found a way to enjoy what I do. I don’t do any social media that I don’t enjoy doing. And I’m not just going to be doing silly trends just for the sake of it. Sometimes our tour manager Rocky, he’s a bit more intune to what’s going around, and he’ll be like, “Do this, it would be funny,” and if I think it’s funny, then I will do it. But yeah, for the most part, we just kind of stick to our guns and do what we want. I’m happy to embrace being cringey online, but to a certain point. But sometimes you see bands that are in their fifties or whatever doing TikTok stuff, and I’m like, ooh, but it will probably end up being me. And I know that (laughs), it’s easy for me to say now, but yeah, it’s just all about being myself. We’ve learned that I think the first time around, being super self-depracating was kind of my tone of voice online, and now we’re so proud of the new record and the band at the moment, that it’s not necessarily being self-depracating. Being ironic works really well for us, both in our music and our social media presence. Just being a bit sarcastic and stuff, so yeah, we’re trying to embrace being a bit funnier rather than being serious all the time (laughs). 

NES: And we talked about it, but obviously, you have your self-titled album. It’s the first time it’s been the four of you on an album together in eight years. Your first time writing and recording music again for As It Is. We talked about it a little bit, you started being friends again and going out to the pub together, having that conversation, but how was it to be back in the studio together? Being hands-on, taking your time. 

Ben: Well, we really took our time with this one. It kind of started with Patty and me bouncing around a few ideas back and forth. And we live in the same city, so it’s pretty easy for us to meet up and kind of started with “Lose Your Way,” the kind of bare bones of which were written in a weekend. As most songs go, it went through quite a lot of variations before we recorded it. But we wrote that in May 2024, at least the first version of it. We recorded it in May 2025, knowing that that was going to be the first song for the album. Then I think we did three or four set prep trips to the studio. Each about ten days long. So we announced the album before we had finished it, which was nuts for us. So yeah, we took our time with it. Every other album, we’ve always gone to America and been there for about a month and a half, doing it all in one go. We knew we didn’t want to do that; we just kind of wanted to take our time, go in and out of the studio, and that worked really well for us. And our pace of life, and just how long we wanted to kind of want to spend on it. Because ultimately, there was no pressure; no one was asking us to make a record. The only people that wanted us to make a record at that time were us. So there was no timeframe or anything, and that felt really nice for a change. 

NES: Then you did the festival circuit last month, and you’ve thrown together these dates, especially considering the circumstances you were given. The album’s about to come out. It’s so early to tell, and I’m sure you can’t say much further, but maybe hopes or goals, as cheesy as it may sound, with the release of this album on Friday. 

Ben: Honestly, I just hope people connect with it; that would be the biggest one. It sounds weird to say, but our goal was ultimately just to make it. Like to make a record, do that, because I don’t think we felt it about like our past couple of records. But to make a record where it hypothetically, and it isn’t going to be, but if hypothetically it was our last record, to be like okay, we’re proud of, like our discography there. Like we’ve bookended it nicely, because everything fizzled out in such an unfortunate way. It was all about reclaiming the band and making something good out of a situation that went really, really badly for a bit. So yeah, we’ve kind of done the goal, ultimately, which is to just make a record that we’re all super proud of. And it is quite different, but I hope people love that. And just yeah, get out and play it to as many people. I mean, we’re in the spirit of wanting to do things that we haven’t done before. So like, I don’t know if you’ve seen, but we’re coming over, and we’re doing one show in the American Dream Mall, which is mad. When we got hit up about that, and they were like oh we have Jonas come here and Taylor Swift here, our manager was like, “You know this is As It Is, this is not the Jonas Brothers,” and they were like, “Yeah, we know.” I don’t know, but we’re really excited to go play in basically the biggest mall. Should be a really cool day out there, and we’re doing a UK tour in September, that goes to a lot of towns and cities that, even though we’ve been a band for fourteen years, we’ve never played in. Those towns, so yeah, still trying to find new places to go. I think Southeast Asia and South America are big on our bucket lists of things we want to do next year. Because we never had the chance to do those places, and yeah, just see what comes through. And just ride the wave. Not say yes to absolutely everything, which is what we used to do, so yeah. 

NES: Yeah, I’m surprised. In all that time, Southeast Asia was never something that was done. 

Ben: We’ve done Japan, and we did one show in the Philippines. But there’s a lot of places we’ve never done a tour out there. It almost happened once, but I can’t remember why that didn’t happen. And we’ve never done South America or Mexico or anything like that. Hopefully, we get to do that next year, or on this album cycle, I’d say. 

NES: That’s so funny, considering all the time you guys were in the States. 

Ben: Yeah, we’ve done that ten times. 

NES: I was going to say, I’m sure you’ve played here in Boston at least nine or ten times over the years, if not more. 

Ben: Probably on every single one of those tours, I’d say, yeah. 

NES: Yeah, between all the Warped Tours you did, your headliners, AP Tour. It’s so great to see in 2026, so many bands still there from those Warped eras. I just covered The Cab, they played their first show in Boston in over fourteen years, to see The Maine still kicking, you guys back. It’s great. 

Ben: Yeah, just on Saturday, I was at My Chemical Romance, and it was one of those moments; it just felt inherently so positive for the scene as a whole. Wembley Stadium, it’s 90,000 people, and growing up being a teenager on Myspace, the idea of any band in our world being able to do three sold-out nights at Wembley is completely inconceivable. There’s lots of things at the moment where the ceiling just keeps rising, for the alternative scene, and it’s really good to see. It was absolutely a spectacle. I think if anyone wasn’t a fan, that is an impressive show. I feel the same way about like Sleep Token or Bring Me The Horizon or any of these bands like that, getting to that kind of size or mass appeal or amount of radio play, or whatever, is inherently good for the scene, and everyone in it.