In January 2024, Patty ended fan speculation and confirmed As It Is’ hiatus, two years after releasing I WENT TO HELL AND BACK and five after Ben’s exit from the band. But nearly three years later, they’ve reformed, reissued their debut, and written album five from the ground up. It all feels like a combination of destiny and miracle.
“When we did start reconnecting, it was going for drinks and hanging out as friends first,” clarifies Ben. “I needed to step away because it was more of a identity crisis, not knowing who I was outside of being Ben from As It Is. I needed to find that.
“That still led me back to music in a different way – doing Bleak Soul and crew stuff – but within that, I learned very quickly that I really struggle to care as much about any art project as I do As It Is.”
“It was so important to write this record, get the band back together, reclaim our brotherhood and our agency,” adds Patty, “because of how painful it was to watch a project that we’d built together crumble and fall apart, when everybody stepped away.
“I basically had one goal since I was 12, which was to be in a band and tour the world. I didn’t really have much of a Plan B for myself, I guess, and maybe that’s on me. Without [music], my life is over. And then I didn’t have music anymore, and I found that my life didn’t have to be over.”
Therapy, plus Patty’s work in the charity sector, enabled the frontman to find fulfilment, helping As It Is 2.0 operate in a more relaxed, sustainable fashion, instead of prioritising momentum and saying yes to everything. It perhaps explains the sunshine-fuelled sound of the record, which can seem like a head scratcher on paper. If you’re familiar with the Brighton boys, it’s probably for 2018’s MCR-fuelled The Great Depression, or breakout 2015 debut Never Happy, Ever After, which helped them ride the crest of the British pop-punk wave alongside Neck Deep and Trash Boat.
But times have changed. “Being back and feeling right again, that’s the colour palette, the theme of the record,” Patty explains.
“This album is a lot more hopeful,” nods Ben. “But songs like Ruin My Life are a sarcastic twist on the idea of returning to the band. ‘Is this us ruining our lives by doing it?’”
‘But what I’d give to feel it one more time’ Patty asks on that track, cueing into a communal pop-rock chorus and speaking his band’s revival into existence.