Post by Heather on Apr 13, 2011 16:07:13 GMT -5
Sum 41 screams "Bloody Murder" on new album
By Sean Plummer, March 28, 2011
They may sometimes be slagged off for injecting pop melodies into punk songs, but the members of Ajax, ON-spawned Sum 41 wield attitudes entirely reminiscent of their safety pin-sporting forebears. Case in point: frontman Deryck Whibley's utter lack of guilt or shame for taking the better part of two years to write the band's new album "Screaming Bloody Murder," out March 29. But when the songs came, Whibley says, they came quickly. Still, they took their time with the album, no matter what the pressure from management or label.
"I had a realization early on, which gave me a lot of freedom, [which] was that I just said f**k everybody. I don't give a s**t because we sell out tours. We don't need anybody. F**k radio, f**k press, f**k the critics. I don't give a s**t about anybody. I'm not mad at them, but we just don't need them. So I said f**k you to everybody. And once I had that freedom I think that's why the songs came so quick. And we just knew we could make a record that we would love and would love to play live and our fans would love, and that's how this record got made."
It's a blustery January day in Toronto, and the members of Sum 41 -- Whibley, bassist Jason "Cone" McCaslin and drummer Steve Jocz -- are hunkered down in a pool hall down the street from MuchMusic's national headquarters. They're at the beginning of seven hours of interviews for "Murder," an ambitious record that evolves their relatively simple sound with complex orchestrations and keyboards while retaining their trademark guitar-drum-bass attack. Talking to them, it becomes obvious that they're proud of what they've accomplished on this, their fifth studio album.
"We all feel just really happy about this one," says Jocz. "I don't know if it was the break that came before but we all sort of feel rejuvenated, like it was when we first started doing this. We're really excited to go back out on the road and take this on again."
"Screaming Bloody Murder" is still pop and it's still punk, but the trio (augmented by guitarist Tom Thacker live) obviously have ambitions to escape the pop-punk ghetto. Hence the Brechtian playfulness of "Sick of It All," the epic keyboards of "Crash" and the muscular rock sounds of "Jessica Kills." For his part, Jocz is hoping to restore a sense of danger to rock & roll, which he feels has been abandoned by contemporaries more interested in crossing over and getting parties started.
"Right now there are so many f**king rock bands in our genre who have co-opted this disco pop stuff and it's like 'okay, let's put a techno beat in this rock song.' And we're not having it."
Adds Whibley: "Again it was the freedom of not caring if it gets on radio or if critics like it or anything. It's like 'let's make a f**king rock record that we like.' And we just knew that we had this fanbase that we have a connection with."
"And we're really close with our fans because we do a lot of online stuff," says Cone. "We knew our fans wanted this kind of album. We wanted to make this album, but we knew our fans would appreciate our making an album like this; like a heavier, intense, dark album."
That "Screaming Bloody Murder" is heavy, intense and dark should come as little surprise. Whibley, who writes virtually all the band's songs and lyrics, divorced his wife Avril Lavigne in 2009 after just three years of marriage. But he's quick to point out that this is not a divorce album.
"People are going to say what they're going to say," he says. "You can't control it. It's really not a divorce record. You can relate a lot of stuff to it..."
"Which people will," says Cone.
"But a lot of stuff I'm singing about, like that song 'Over Now,' is not about that."
Ah, yes. Whibley wrote that particular piano ballad five years ago, while still happily married to Lavigne, but its lyrics are ripe for justifiable misinterpretation. Example: "It was never supposed to end up this way / What am I supposed to do? / Was I supposed to grow old with you?"
Jocz is quick to jump to his bandmate's defence. "There are a lot of break-up-type songs that are popular on the radio, but they all have that throwaway, cheesy sound to them. But there's a level of depth that Deryck gets into with the lyrics that reveal a bit more personal emotion than your surface 'I'm over you' [sentiment] or whatever bulls**t throwaway pop punk breakup s**t [is on the radio]. It's not what this album is."
Whibley admits that he wrote "Screaming Bloody Murder" during "a very dark period." But by the time the band got around to renting a house in the Hollywood Hills to record the material "it was like fun time." Hence the album's generally upbeat tone.
Adds Steve: "Deryck had already gone through all that s**t and it seemed like a different time and person. So the songs started to seem like this separate thing, and they changed to be the party thing."
"Yeah, by the time we were recording it was like, okay, been through all this s**t, let's have some fun now," says Whibley. "Everything's okay now."
entertainment.ca.msn.com/music/features/article.aspx?cp-documentid=28164298
By Sean Plummer, March 28, 2011
They may sometimes be slagged off for injecting pop melodies into punk songs, but the members of Ajax, ON-spawned Sum 41 wield attitudes entirely reminiscent of their safety pin-sporting forebears. Case in point: frontman Deryck Whibley's utter lack of guilt or shame for taking the better part of two years to write the band's new album "Screaming Bloody Murder," out March 29. But when the songs came, Whibley says, they came quickly. Still, they took their time with the album, no matter what the pressure from management or label.
"I had a realization early on, which gave me a lot of freedom, [which] was that I just said f**k everybody. I don't give a s**t because we sell out tours. We don't need anybody. F**k radio, f**k press, f**k the critics. I don't give a s**t about anybody. I'm not mad at them, but we just don't need them. So I said f**k you to everybody. And once I had that freedom I think that's why the songs came so quick. And we just knew we could make a record that we would love and would love to play live and our fans would love, and that's how this record got made."
It's a blustery January day in Toronto, and the members of Sum 41 -- Whibley, bassist Jason "Cone" McCaslin and drummer Steve Jocz -- are hunkered down in a pool hall down the street from MuchMusic's national headquarters. They're at the beginning of seven hours of interviews for "Murder," an ambitious record that evolves their relatively simple sound with complex orchestrations and keyboards while retaining their trademark guitar-drum-bass attack. Talking to them, it becomes obvious that they're proud of what they've accomplished on this, their fifth studio album.
"We all feel just really happy about this one," says Jocz. "I don't know if it was the break that came before but we all sort of feel rejuvenated, like it was when we first started doing this. We're really excited to go back out on the road and take this on again."
"Screaming Bloody Murder" is still pop and it's still punk, but the trio (augmented by guitarist Tom Thacker live) obviously have ambitions to escape the pop-punk ghetto. Hence the Brechtian playfulness of "Sick of It All," the epic keyboards of "Crash" and the muscular rock sounds of "Jessica Kills." For his part, Jocz is hoping to restore a sense of danger to rock & roll, which he feels has been abandoned by contemporaries more interested in crossing over and getting parties started.
"Right now there are so many f**king rock bands in our genre who have co-opted this disco pop stuff and it's like 'okay, let's put a techno beat in this rock song.' And we're not having it."
Adds Whibley: "Again it was the freedom of not caring if it gets on radio or if critics like it or anything. It's like 'let's make a f**king rock record that we like.' And we just knew that we had this fanbase that we have a connection with."
"And we're really close with our fans because we do a lot of online stuff," says Cone. "We knew our fans wanted this kind of album. We wanted to make this album, but we knew our fans would appreciate our making an album like this; like a heavier, intense, dark album."
That "Screaming Bloody Murder" is heavy, intense and dark should come as little surprise. Whibley, who writes virtually all the band's songs and lyrics, divorced his wife Avril Lavigne in 2009 after just three years of marriage. But he's quick to point out that this is not a divorce album.
"People are going to say what they're going to say," he says. "You can't control it. It's really not a divorce record. You can relate a lot of stuff to it..."
"Which people will," says Cone.
"But a lot of stuff I'm singing about, like that song 'Over Now,' is not about that."
Ah, yes. Whibley wrote that particular piano ballad five years ago, while still happily married to Lavigne, but its lyrics are ripe for justifiable misinterpretation. Example: "It was never supposed to end up this way / What am I supposed to do? / Was I supposed to grow old with you?"
Jocz is quick to jump to his bandmate's defence. "There are a lot of break-up-type songs that are popular on the radio, but they all have that throwaway, cheesy sound to them. But there's a level of depth that Deryck gets into with the lyrics that reveal a bit more personal emotion than your surface 'I'm over you' [sentiment] or whatever bulls**t throwaway pop punk breakup s**t [is on the radio]. It's not what this album is."
Whibley admits that he wrote "Screaming Bloody Murder" during "a very dark period." But by the time the band got around to renting a house in the Hollywood Hills to record the material "it was like fun time." Hence the album's generally upbeat tone.
Adds Steve: "Deryck had already gone through all that s**t and it seemed like a different time and person. So the songs started to seem like this separate thing, and they changed to be the party thing."
"Yeah, by the time we were recording it was like, okay, been through all this s**t, let's have some fun now," says Whibley. "Everything's okay now."
entertainment.ca.msn.com/music/features/article.aspx?cp-documentid=28164298