Punk Rock Factory‘s Peej and Kob guide us through every little detail of their relentlessly fun and nostalgic new album ‘All Hands On Deck’, out February 14 via Cooking Vinyl.

Plus, we have teamed up with the band to bring you this exclusive t-shirt design you won’t find anywhere else.

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Since Punk Rock Factory started recording covers a decade ago, they have had two particular categories of songs they’ve wanted to conquer: musicals and the 90s. And considering that they took care of the former back in 2023 with their curtain-dropping full-length ‘It’s Just A Stage We’re Going Through’, it felt like the right time to consider tackling the latter. But the thing is that things are very different now, and the band that first set out those two targets have done more than they ever even considered to be possible. What started out as a bit of fun on the internet has become a life-altering sensation, garnering thousands of views, streams, and packed-out shows worldwide. For something that was always just a piss-about between four mates, that’s not bad going at all. And when it comes to actually making the music, the process is even more organic than that.

“We just love making music,” drummer Andrew “Kob” Robinson smiles. “We get in the studio, make a cover, and it feels good, then we go and do another one, and before you know it, we’re making a whole album. And we’ve always wanted to do the 90s. It was such a part of our childhoods, and as much as we listened to rock growing up, those guilty pleasures always stick with you. It’s always been on the back-burner, so it was class to finally do it properly.”

So, from sitting down and listening to every copy of NOW, That’s What I Call Music from 1990 to 1999 and picking out the tracks that hit home the hardest to figuring out how to turn them into future rock club classics, the result is ‘All Hands On Deck’. As much a celebration of the most brilliant and batshit soundtracks to one of the most iconic and infamous decades in living memory as it is a signal for just how confident Punk Rock Factory have become in their own artistic expressions, it is a record made for the good times. Pure unadulterated fun, filtered through a stream of pit-spinning beats, buoyant riffs and throat-shredding singalongs. It represents the sort of vivacious, carefree and jubilant energy that we need so much more of in this day and age, and that is not lost on the band in any way.

“We did this to have fun,” vocalist Peej Edwards explains. “And now, we have accidentally become this positive influence that people have latched onto. To genuinely help people come out the other side of these dark moments in their lives whilst playing these guilty pleasures for them to sing along to, that’s really rewarding.”

To learn more about how this headfirst dive into the past turned into something more significant, Rock Sound sat down with Peej and Kob and went through every little detail.

THE SOUND

When your sole purpose is to put an alternative spin on something, only so many beats are available for you to pull from. And when, as a band, you have tackled everything from ‘Defying Gravity’ to the Paw Patrol theme song, it’s easy to find yourself stuck in a formula simply because of how comfortable a middle ground that pursuit can be. Yet with so many tracks already under their belt, ‘All Hands On Deck’ felt like the right time to spread the Punk Rock Factory wings as far as they could possibly go. Having established what to expect, now the band wanted to play with the unexpected.

“If you listen to our early stuff and all of the Disney songs, it’s just flat-out fast punk beats on everything,” Peej comments. “Proper Fat Wreck Chords. How fast can we make this? How thrashy can we make this? I would say there’s much less punk rock and more metal involved in this one. There are dirty riffs and breakdowns in some of the tracks, but then on others it’s still bubblegum pop-punk. I just feel like we are all getting our best bits in on it, really.”

Because when, as a band, you’re into Nirvana and Metallica as much as they are NOFX and Pennywise, why wouldn’t they indulge a little? That’s how you end up with their take on Will Smith‘s ‘Boom! Shake The Room’ feeling like a nu-metal mainstay or their version of NSYNC‘S ‘Bye Bye Bye’ pulling more from the legendary NYHC stylings of Madball and Sick Of It All than anything else. It’s sometimes easy to forget that you control every aspect of your project when you’re moving so fast. So, in spreading their influences even further afield than ever, the band are reminding themselves that they are the ones who write the rulebook, and that’s always been the case.

“A lot of bands deal with having that sense of ego where you’ve done things a certain way, so that’s how you have to always do it,” Kob states. “We literally don’t care. We are just so thankful that we can do this at all. So now we’re thinking about things differently and how it’s more about what the song needs than anything else.”

THE COLLABORATORS

The most prominent way that the band has thought about things differently is by allowing somebody else to tinker with their songs. In reality, they could have released ‘All Hands On Deck’ off their own backs. They recorded, mixed, and engineered the demos themselves, and even took them on tour with them around America to listen to over and over again. But rather than keeping it all internal this time around, they invited Phil Gornell to the party, who had a very different view on things. Using his experience working with the likes of Busted, Bring Me The Horizon and All Time Low, he took the songs apart, rebuilt them and showed the band how much further potential was right there at their fingertips.

“We’ve always been very protective over what we do,” Peej admits. “Everything, since day one, has been us. And when we demoed these songs, we all thought, ‘This is banging, these songs are class, we’re really happy.’ But then when Phil came in, it was like, ‘Change this, don’t like that, don’t like this’, it was like, ‘Oh shit’. But now we listen to it, and it feels like an accomplishment. In ripping the songs apart completely, going back to the start and thinking whether certain parts needed to be a certain way, he helped us transform it. We couldn’t be more thankful for that.”

It’s understandable to be in a position where you feel like you are making all the right moves yourself when you have been having success with something for as long as the band have. But in that openness for advice, they can now do things they probably never dreamed of. Like playing their cover of ‘Ce La Vie’ live and being joined by the real-life Bewitched. Or having Jacoby Shaddix guest with them while they played ‘Last Resort’ in the Czech Republic. Or receiving support from everyone from Bowling For Soup‘s Jaret Reddick to Ice Nine Kills‘ Spencer Charnas. Or having Tony Lovato from MEST and Steve Rawles from Belvedere tell them they have helped their kids get into punk-rock. Though these names may not have their fingerprints embedded in ‘All Hands On Deck’, their blessings are a firm reminder that change is a good thing and that taking that scary step out of your comfort zone can sometimes reap the most immense rewards.

“This was never supposed to be a touring band; this was supposed to just be for us, and then things started popping off online,” Kob remarks. “People actually wanted to see and watch this. We held off from playing live for so long, and now each tour keeps on getting bigger. And then this who’s who of punk-rock royalty has come out of the woodwork to support us, telling us that we are a gateway drug for their kids ending up listening to Descendents. How often does stuff like that happen? Now, it doesn’t matter if we hand what we do from producer to producer, and they smash it into a thousand pieces and help us start over again. We are living the dream either way.”

THE LYRICS

“The amount of people who come to shows and say that they didn’t know if they would still be here if it wasn’t for us during COVID is a lot. We never plotted out to have any sort of influence like that.”

There’s a real sense of disbelief in Peej’s voice when he states this, but coming to terms with the positive power that Punk Rock Factory now hold is an ongoing process. And the fact that none of it has ever been pre-determined or planned makes it even more to take on. Yet it’s clear that when it comes to selecting the songs, they want to put their mark on, the band do have a knack for picking up ones that feel like sunshine breaking through the clouds, which only adds to the positivity surrounding them. It’s even more apparent on ‘All Hands On Deck’, which also reflects what the zeitgeist’s mood was 30 years ago as well. The celebration of the little things at the core of Des’ree‘s ‘Life’, the glistening affirmations that hold S Club 7‘s ‘Bring It All Back’ together, the hedonistic expression that shakes the hips during Ricky Martin‘s ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’, they are all presented by the band with a smile plastered firmly across their chops. And though they state that they never meant for their output to be so motivational, it’s certainly a reflection of them as people that is has become such a vital part of their ethos.

“There are a lot of songs that we ended up not using that we could have,” Kob remarks. “Like ‘Closing Time’ by Semisonic. Initially, that may have worked, but it was a depressing one. It’s like, subconsciously, we always seem to pick the songs where you can get that feel-good feeling.”

“Something that becomes apparent to us throughout this is that idea of guilty pleasures,” Peej adds. “You don’t have people driving around in their cars listening to Disney, but they go around listening to us do it. We’re giving them a place where they can be themselves no matter what. To make them feel good. So, we will keep playing those guilty pleasures that people can sing along to and enjoy while laughing and messing around with each other.”

And when so many of us still feel like we have to be something else to fit in, suppressing what makes our souls shine because of the worry of what someone else will think of it, such a way of existing is much more necessary than ever. And for the band, if it’s watching a six-foot Viking scream the words to ‘Let It Go’ on the front row of their set at Bloodstock or finding out that someone has decided that the Punk Rock Factory should be their first-ever experience of live music, knowing that they are offering up something so important to so many is a gift that they never expected to get.

THE TITLE AND ARTWORK

Until now, the artwork of a Punk Rock Factory record was a chance to really amp up the silly. But considering how far they have come, ‘All Hands On Deck’ felt like the right time to focus on timelessness over theatrics. Fanaticising about flicking through a record collection and seeing the sorts of iconic covers that would always stand out – Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ or Rage Against The Machine‘s self-titled, to name a couple – they settled on something clean and neat. With the deck in the title pointing towards that which you put your tapes in, their minds pointed towards just having the cover art be that very tape. Pure, simple and iconic. However, that does not mean they didn’t consider going all out.

“We knew we wanted to go with this tape deck vibe, but we started by looking at something close to the Saved By The Bell look with bright colours and weird shapes. We always like it to be a play on words. And then Kob came up with the idea of this simple image, and the result is almost elegant in a way.”

“We realised that what we do doesn’t always need to be too crazy,” Kob adds. “We don’t need to go mad and make things too over the top. We wanted to take it up to that grown-up feeling just a little bit more than we have before.”

Decisions like this show once again just how different the mindset of Punk Rock Factory is now from what it was in the past. Moving away from sausage puns and fancy-dress moments and considering what they are producing will look like in a decade is a big step toward understanding exactly how special what they have created is.

THE FUTURE

The fact is that every day, the Punk Rock Factory are having to pinch themselves about what is actually going on. 2025 is confirmed as seeing them take to some of their biggest stages yet, Brixton Academy with Elvana and Wembley Arena with Bowling For Soup to highlight a couple. Their Summer is already overflowing with European festival slots, and their headline shows are becoming more and more substantial with every announcement. The potential for how monumental this can get is still only surface level and with the generation-bridging power of ‘All Hands On Deck’, who knows who will join the party.

But the truth is that even without those incredible plans, Peej and Kob would still be doing this no matter what. Because Punk Rock Factory doesn’t win or lose based on support, streams, or accolades. It has always been about four friends getting together, doing something that makes them laugh and harnessing the purest elements of what it means to be human through the lens of alternative music. That invaluable connection and unbridled brotherhood cannot be bought or sold. It comes from deep within and will continue to be the core of this wonderful, weird and whacky phenomenon from now until forever.

“Even if all of this dried up tomorrow, we would still be doing it,” Kob beams. “We were doing it for a good five years before anybody knew who we were because these things kept us sane. Every Monday, we would get together and make covers just to keep us going.”

“The truth is that we had all given up on the band thing and felt like we had exhausted it,” Peej adds. “We wanted to just do something that made us happy, for that thing that was so fun for us kick off and pay off in the way it has is wild, and it always will be.”

Punk Rock Factory’s biggest ever UK tour will be announced on Monday February 10.