Tag: Sum 41

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Sum 41

with Seaway & Super Whatevr

Doors: 6:30PM

Sum 41 will be performing their FULL record, Does This Look Infected?, to celebrate its 15th Anniversary!

Sum 41 hit worldwide radar in 1996 after tiny Ajax, Ontario proved unable to fully contain the foursome’s mixture of punk-pop riffing, hip-hop poses, and toilet-bowl humor. Led by guitarist/vocalist Deryck Whibley, the band also included guitarist/vocalist Dave Baksh, bassist Cone McCaslin, and drummer Steve Jocz. Wooed by the boys’ goofy antics and incendiary live show (and excited about the prospect of promoting their very own blink-182), Island put Sum 41 on the payroll in 1999. The Half Hour of Power EP followed, and Warped Tour dates got the word out. They returned in 2000 with the fun-filled full-length All Killer No Filler, and the singles “In Too Deep” and “Fat Lip” became staples of both modern rock radio and TRL.

An extensive tour followed, and Sum 41 enjoyed their success the way all near-teenage boys would, with plenty of towel-snapping, groupie-loving, and self-deprecating, low-ball humor. In 2002, they returned to wax with Does This Look Infected? While the album was a bit harder-edged, it found the band just as jazzed as ever to mix punk-pop business with sophomoric pleasure: the video for “Hell Song” featured the fellas acting out a sort of rock star debauchery cage match with the aid of a few celebrity action figures. Metallica, Jesus Christ, and the Osbournes all made appearances in the hilarious clip.

It was not all fun and games, however, as their involvement in the charity group War Child Canada had Sum 41 lending a hand in the making of a 2004 documentary covering the effects of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Five days into filming, fighting and gunfire suddenly erupted around them, and they barely escaped unharmed — these events led to 2004’s slightly more mature and serious effort, Chuck, named for the UN aid worker, Chuck Pelletier, who was instrumental in getting them to safety. The DVD Rocked: Sum 41 in Congo was released at the end of 2005 and the live album Go Chuck Yourself appeared the following March.

Guitarist Dave Baksh left the band during the spring of 2006 due to creative differences, going on to form the metal-punk outfit Brown Brigade. Sum 41 continued on as a trio, and their first album as such, Underclass Hero, appeared in July 2007. The band eventually returned to being a quartet, replacing Baksh with guitarist Tom Thacker, and began to work on a new album. That new album, entitled Screaming Bloody Murder, appeared in March of 2011. “Blood in My Eyes,” a single from the album, was nominated for a Grammy that year. However, due to a series of back injuries for Whibley, Sum 41 would not return with new material for half a decade, despite their critical success.

During the break, Jocz left the band and was replaced by Street Drum Corps’ Frank Zummo. Baksh also returned to the fold, just in time for Sum 41’s comeback in 2016. The group signed with Hopeless Records. Their sixth LP, 13 Voices, featured the lead single “Fake My Own Death.” While promoting the album, Whibley revealed that he was in an alcohol-related induced coma in 2014. While recovery included learning to walk and play guitar again, Whibley contributed a large part of his healing to the writing process of 13 Voices. To coincide with the album release, the band embarked on an international tour dubbed “Don’t Call It a Sum-Back.”

 

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Sum 41 with Senses Fail, As It Is

“I can’t pin-point one exact moment that put me over the edge, it was more of an accumulation of many things when I slipped into a fog of partying and booze. I tried to detach myself from any and all responsibility whatsoever,” Whibley reflects. He spent the next year doing just that, and at the end found himself in a Los Angeles hospital fighting for his life.

Whibley spent most of April and May 2014 in and out of the ICU with his mother and fiancée by his side. When he was finally released as an outpatient he realized that his journey was just beginning, and it was then that he began to write while simultaneously going through intense physical therapy. “Being sober and out of the fog made me realize that the only things I really cared about were music, making a record, and getting better so I could get back on stage again.”

The music came together in tandem with Whibley’s health; he recalls: “Due to neuropathy, muscle atrophy and medication that caused permanent nerve damage in my legs and feet left me unable to walk and in excruciating pain for months. I had to learn how to do everything again—my motor skills, learning how to play guitar. It was really difficult, but at the same time if I didn’t have a record to make, I don’t think I would have recovered as quickly, or even at all.”

He continues, “Writing music gave me a purpose and I started from scratch with absolutely nothing to work with. I would put on movies with no sound and start writing guitar riffs and music to the images. Mostly movies from Tim Burton and Quentin Tarantino like Edward Scissorhands, Sweeny Todd, Kill Bill and Inglorious Bastards. The process led me in a direction that I had never gone in before which made me feel like I was writing a theatrical score called “hard-score punk”.

Soon, he was gathering his bandmates at his home in Los Angeles to begin laying down tracks for what would become the group’s sixth full-length album, 13 Voices. The record includes a surprise return from original guitarist Dave Brownsound, who parted ways with the band a decade prior. The first song Dave played guitar on was “Goddamn I’m Dead Again” a track that proves that the fiery guitar riffs that came to define SUM 41 are back.

In addition to bassist Cone McCaslin and lead guitarist Tom Thacker, Sum 41 would also formally welcome Frank Zummo (Street Drum Corps, Krewella, Thenewno2, Dead By Sunrise) behind the kit.

Whibley produced and engineered 13 Voices entirely on his own in his house. Drums were set up in the living room, guitar amps in the bedrooms. The end result stands tall as SUM 41’s most intense, cathartic and all-around finest work in years.

The album was written from a place of optimism, and speaks to the necessity of Whibley’s drastic fall before he was able to rise again. Opener “A Murder Of Crows,” the first track written upon the frontman’s release from the hospital, is about how those closest to Whibley quickly abandoned him when things got bad. The song’s haunting refrain (“You’re all dead to me”), repeated over bombastic percussion and steadily building guitars, is Whibley’s rallying cry; he’s letting go of the past in order to salvage his future.

He touches upon the theme of letting go further in “Fake My Own Death,” the fan track being released first from the record. “I just wanted to get away from everything that I had been doing. I needed to start a new life—like faking my own death.”

With the upcoming release of this album we see SUM 41 as an impenetrable unit putting everything they’ve got out into 13 Voices. The result is a dynamic, impassioned collection of melodic, guitar wielding, rock songs. “I can’t say whether this is our best record or not, as I don’t know if it is,” states Whibley. “All I can say is I did the best I possibly could during the toughest period of my life”.