Sum 41 Say Goodbye on a High, Sometimes Overly-Ambitious Note with Heaven :x: Hell

Sum 41's breakthrough full-length debut All Killer, No Filler came out during my first month of college. As an American male on the more immature end of the 18-24 demographic, I should have been right in that album's wheelhouse. Add to that the fact that included in our campus cable package was Much Music USA (think Canadian MTV but they still played tons of rock videos) which gave Sum 41 heavy airplay, and the conditions were perfect for me to fall madly in love with them and form a lifelong attachment the way I have with other brands from my formative years like Green Day and Nine Inch Nails.

Instead, I met their first single 'Fat Lip' with a shrug and a 'meh'. I liked the choruses enough, but the verses seemed like someone trying to imitate the Beastie Boys and it just wasn't my thing.

It wasn't until their follow-up single 'In Too Deep' that they started getting their catchy pop punk hooks into my brain. A big reason for that was the absolutely radical guitar solo that Dave Baksh throws down midway through the song. It fit the pop punk style of the song, but the Van Halen-esque finger-tapping he used caught my attention immediately. Heavy metal sensibilities with the catchy earnestness of pop punk? Now you've got my attention.

The more I listened to All Killer, No Filler, the more I realized that 'Fat Lip' was the exception and that I actually really liked the rest of the album outside that song (so maybe some filler?) and it briefly became a staple in my regular rotation for the next few months, after which they fell into the "yeah, I used to listen to them" pile with bands like Simple Plan and Good Charlotte (who, funny enough, I really got into again when they started getting more new-wavy).

And that's...kind of it for me and Sum 41. Nothing against them, I was just entering my second year of college which required me to get more emo on my way toward going full acoustic Bright Eyes by the time I was an upperclassman (think of it as going opposite-Dylan but way lamer). They went on to sell millions of albums and tour the entire world in the time between then and now, as I have listened to hundreds of albums and toured quite a few Costcos in that time as well.

So what brings us back together after all these years? Sum 41 are hanging them up. That's right, their new double album Heaven : x : Hell is set to be the band's last. On the new album, vocalist Deryck Whibley says, “Once I heard the music, I was confident enough to say, ‘This is the record I’d like to go out on.’ We’ve made a double album of pop punk and metal, and it makes sense. It took a long time for us to pave this lane for ourselves, but we did, and it’s unique to us.” The end result isn't a double album of songs influenced by both pop punk and metal, but two separate albums, one of pop punk songs and one of metal songs, all in one package.

Maybe it's weird of me to think this, but it honestly feels like Heaven (the first of the two albums) is almost a pop punk tribute album to the types of bands that both influenced Sum 41's sound or were possibly influenced by Sum 41 themselves. As I listened to the album, I got a strange deja vu that I'd heard these songs before. Not in a bad way, but in a 'wait this really feels familiar to me' kind of way even on my first listen.

The album kicks off with the 1/2 pop punk punch (say that 5 times fast) of 'Waiting' and 'Landmines', which are basically whatever the pop punk equivalent of doing a line of cocaine would be (snorting Pixie Stix?) and are exactly what you would expect to kick off the album where they were very much trying to lean into those sensibilities. 'Waiting' is the kind of arena-ready rocker that would absolutely fit right in as a set opener. Following it up with the infinitely catchy chorus of 'Landmines' in a live setting wouldn't be such a bad idea either. Both lend themselves equally to both crowd surfing and screaming along.

Moving through the rest of Heaven, in some ways it's the same Sum 41 we've always known. For the most part, singer Deryck Whibley even sounds the same as he did coming out of the shitty clock radio I had in my freshman dorm back in 2001. And as he sings on 'Future Primitive', "losing faith is the brand new trend' and boy there seems to be a lot of trend setting across these 10 tracks. While pop-punk music can have the spirit and tempo of more positive, uplifting music, Whibley can't help but dabble into more serious and sometimes heavy subject matter. Lyrics on songs like Time Won't Wait seem to hit even harder knowing this is the last album we're getting from the band. Even on the Heaven album he couldn't help but dabble in a little hell.

But even as you wade through this top-shelf collection of pop punk jams, you start to feel those different styles and sounds I talked about earlier creeping their way in around the edges of some of the songs. Is it just me or does 'Bad Mistake' sound like a better version of The Offspring's 'You're Gonna Go Far, Kid'? Doesn't 'Dopamine' sound like it would be right at home on a late-career Blink 182 album? Johnny Libertine sounds like a direct ode to mid-career Green Day's fondness for songs based around politically charged fictional characters. Expanding a bit outside the genre, the album's closer 'Radio Silence' dabbles in the arena-sized balladry of bands like Kings of Leon and Imagine Dragons. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not to make their last hurrah a tribute of sorts to the entire pop punk genre, but that's exactly how it turned out, a love letter to not only where the genre has been but also throwing a wink and nod toward some of the more modern directions it's headed.

Hell is a bit more of a mixed bag. I absolutely love the idea of the pop punk/metal double album to say tribute to the band's varied influences, it might be something that's a better idea than in execution. It's not that Sum 41 can't pull off playing metal songs. Far from it. Aside from Baksh's established shredding ability, bassist Jason McCaslin, guitarist Tom Thacker, and drummer Frank Zummo all prove themselves to be more than capable turning things heavier and picking up the tempo where needed.

But the more I listen to Hell, the more it just sounds like Sum 41 playing metal versions of Sum 41 songs rather than just metal songs by a metal band. The result on the heavy metal spectrum falls more toward a band like Three Days Grace than a band like Mastodon. Listening to a song like 'Rise Up' it sounds pretty metal...but not totally metal. The chorus just leans a bit too pop punk and sometimes the result can be a little clunky. Same with 'Stranger in These Times' which comes off as a pretty good Linkin Park impression, but a Linkin Park impression nonetheless.

Which is kind of ironic considering there are a few absolute standout tracks on Hell where the mix of everything comes together just perfectly to make something heavy and vital and one of those is 'How the End Begins'. If 'Bad Mistake' is the better version of 'You're Gonna Go Far, Kid' then 'How the End Begins' is a bang-up variant of Linkin Park's 'What I've Done'. Like I mentioned earlier, for the most part Whibley's voice sounds the same as it ever has on the more upbeat Heaven, but he's able to lean more into that gruff Chester Bennington tone when he wants to and pulls it off to great effect on songs like this one. 'I Don't Need Anyone' is the absolute high point of the album and the heaviest, most METAL track the band has put out with a solo planted toward the end that is as incendiary as anything Kirk Hammett has laid down. If the distortion was cranked from a 7 to a 10 on this song's main riff, you'd swear it was Disturbed.

Throwing in a well done but not much different than GOB's version of The Rolling Stones' 'Paint it Black', Hell is potentially a great album that came out too early. There's a lot of promising stuff in there that could have been an entirely different direction for the band to go in. Sadly, with this being their swan song we won't get to see what that evolution may have ended up like. But if all we have is this double album to remember them by, I agree that it's a damn fine note to go out on. Heaven is great, Hell a little less so (hey just like real life), but together they represent everything that Sum 41 did best over their time as a band.