Sum 41 singer Deryck Whibley was recently interviewed on Houston, Texas radio station 94.5 The Buzz and talked about their new album, “It’s two totally different records. It’s 10 songs each side. I would call like early Sum 41 pop punk, and the ‘Hell’ side is like newer, heavier Sum 41 that we’ve kind of done the past couple of records, that sort of style. I don’t wanna call it metal, but it’s our version of what we do that’s heavy and metal influenced.”
You’ll remember that last month Sum released their new single, “Landmines”, and the official music video (below). The track is on their upcoming album, “Heaven :x: Hell”, which is tentatively due in early 2024.
Whibley added, “Over the years, we’ve done both sort of styles. We’ve had more heavy music than pop-punk music, but since we started with that on those first two records, it’s kind of like you’re labeled that for the rest of your life. But there are fans of ours that don’t really care for any of the pop-punk stuff and only like the heavier stuff, and vice versa.”
And if you’re wondering, no. There are no guest appearances on the new album. “There was some talk about it. We’ve never really done that. And as the record starts moving along, it just gets finished, and we’re, like, ‘Well, I guess we’ve done the record now.’ Those ideas come up early on, and then once the songs are done, we’re, like, ‘I don’t know. Maybe we’ll just leave it as is.'”
Of course, back in May ’23, Sum 41 announced their plans to split up following the completion of a worldwide tour in support of “Heaven :x: Hell”.
Will that actually be the case? Time will tell.
How can you throw away a two and a half decade career, 15 million albums sold, multiple Billboard-charting releases, a Grammy Award nomination, two Juno Awards, a Kerrang! Award? Or, maybe it’s easy to do and just watch ’em.
In the meantime, at least we get one more album outta them. Right?