MattA75's Full Review: All Killer No Filler by Sum 41
At the moment, it seems that being a pop-punk band with a number in your band name is the popular and cool thing to do. Eve 6 blasted through in 1998 on the strength of their excellent song Inside Out. Recently, that band has hit it big again, this time with the coming of age high school graduation ballad Here's to the Night.
Then there's Blink 182, the 3 immature California guys who made their mark by running around naked for a year. They recently released a new album, the very evolved (even if the title doesn't say it) Take Off Your Pants and Jacket.
And most recently, 4 young kids from Toronto Canada have taken America by storm. Last year they released their debut EP Half Hour of Power after being signed by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Sum 41 has risen high onto the charts (a hugely surprising top 25 debut for this record), mostly on the strength of the anthem Fat Lip, which rails against the normal punk things, i.e. conformity, society, and teen angst. OK, so it has a catchy enough guitar hook, a kaleidescope of vocal deliveries (everything from rap to classic punk), and a definite "party" vibe to it. And sure, it's not a bad song to have blasting on your car stereo in the summer, but that's all it is. And for the most part, that's all this whole album is. Which is fine, as long as you take it and accept it as this.
Ultimately, the most interesting musical moments comes when the band strays from their punk roots, although it should be noted that the word "strays" isn't done too much or for too long.
In Too Deep is the best song on the record, propelled by a Smashmouth-like opening of simple guitar picking and under mixed drums. Granted, they fall into the same old same old after a bit of this, but it's the intro that keeps me coming back to this song. And I love the outro as well, with the ringing guitar melody over the simple drumbeat.
The best guitar riff is found on Handle This, a power-ballad like song that draws a lot of power from the vocal delivery of guitarist/vocalist Deryck Whibley, who sings with passion and enthusiasm unmatched elsewhere on the record.
That ultimately is one of the major problems with this disc. Whibley has a great voice for pop-punk, but producer Jerry Finn and mix man Tom Lord-Alge have put his voice in the background, instead having the album focus on the catchy hooks and lyrics that any punk listener has already heard a million times. This will probably result in a boatload of album sales for Sum 41, but as for Whibley's voice, it will probably go neglected on follow up records until the band considers it necessary to grow up, at least a little bit.
This is no more obvious than on Heart Attack, a song that finally showcases Whibley's voice in full effect, only to suffer from being the worst rip off of Blink 182's What's My Age Again? one could ever imagine.
But that's made up for with the 80s heavy metal romp of Pain for Pleasure, which I'm convinced is a cover but the credits in the liner notes say otherwise, and a search on Amazon comes up with nothing. It's great to see that some of the younger bands of today remember the heydey of 80s metal, bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.
In the end, Sum 41 is a carbon copy of a lot of the punk pop bands out there already. But what they do have is a lot of energy, a spark if you will, that a lot of those bands seem to be missing. Their youthful enthusiasm crosses over to the listener on this record better than on any record I've listened to in a while, and for that alone, I give this a 3 star rating, and a pop-punk beginner's only recommendation.
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