INTERVIEW: Checking in with Sum 41 and their depressing new album
There are two schools of thought about rock artists who express negative feelings in their songs.
On one hand, maybe it’s healthy to get that stuff out there. “Name it to tame it,” the therapists say.
But then it all might get to you. The lyrics of Chris Cornell, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, and Kurt Cobain are full of anxiety, alienation, doom and death, which in perfect hindsight one could now interpret as musical cries for help that went unheeded. All three took their own lives.
Of course there are plenty of dark artists who maintain with grim subject matter, and they’re apparently doing fine. Still, it doesn’t hurt to check in. For instance, Sum 41’s new album Order in Decline is a huge downer, despite its lively and clever mash-up of heavy metal, punk rock and alternative pop.
With lyrics exclusively penned by the singer Deryck Whibley, the subject matter is rife with frustration and hopelessness. It’s angry. First track: “I’m turning away because I feel like I can’t go on.” Out for Blood: “All that we have is just slipping away, and I don’t believe that it’s going to be OK.”
Two of the songs are about Donald Trump, and though his name is never mentioned in “45.” The People Vs… rings with the chorus of “He’s got to go!”
The closing track Catching Fire is worrisome because you’re not sure who he’s singing about: “I never knew you needed help, because you always seemed so tough. But now I’m here alone, without you by my side. If only I had known that you kept it all inside.”
There’s a lot to unpack here.
On the occasion of the band headlining the Bear’s sold out Halloween Howler on Saturday, Nov. 2 at the River Cree Casino, I asked bassist Jason “Cone” McCaslin in a phone interview if he’s worried about his friend. He and Whibley have known each other since they were 14, and from some basement jam space in Ajax, Ontario were part of the line-up that would become Sum 41 in 1998.
“I don’t worry about him as much as I did when he was drinking,” McCaslin says.
Whibley suffered liver and kidney failure in 2014 after years of alcohol abuse. He recovered, started working on new music as soon as he could, and is said to have been clean and sober ever since.
This isn’t the first time Sum 41’s music has resonated with negative emotions, but these are dire times. McCaslin says they didn’t really set out to make a political album. It just happened.
“The news was constantly on in our bus as we were touring our last album, all the things we were seeing unfold with the U.S. and everywhere in the world,” he says. “I think we had such an overabundance of shitty news stories coming on all the time. I guess we could turn the news off and not pay attention, but we like to know what’s going on, and we’re interested in what’s going on, and we have opinions on all of it. We have to talk about something other the music – the news was affecting us the most, so that’s what came up.”
Sum 41 started making political music a long time ago. In 2004, the band was in the Congo for a War Child event, and were literally caught in the crossfire in the middle of the civil war. The UN had to rescue them. It took a while for the musicians to process the experience, and the result was the album called Chuck (named after the UN Peacekeeper who helped them escape), and the band’s biggest and most political hit to date, We’re All To Blame.
McCaslin explains, “I think when you go through something like we went through in the Congo, you can’t help but reflect on it. Most of us when we got home didn’t even want to think about it. We almost died. We were close. We were in a war. So it’s one of these things where you get home and you feel lucky, and for me, I didn’t want to think about it for a couple of years.”
If they weren’t woke before, they sure were by the mid 2000s.
“I think it had started already,” McCaslin says. “The biggest political thing for us was when George Bush invaded Iraq, when we perked up and said, oh, this is bullshit! We’re going to start writing about it, and talking about it. We did the Rock Against Bush compilation. That got the ball rolling. And the Congo was the continuation.”
Wait, aren’t these guys Canadian? Why are they rocking against Trump? How dare they?
(Half the band actually lives in America; Whibley has been there since 2005).
“Why do I care, because I’m Canadian?” McCaslin says. “I get that all the time. The US affects everyone in the world, so I do have an opinion. I think it’s stupid for the American public to say, ‘What does it matter to you if you’re not American?’ Yes, it’s their country – and it affects everyone in the world. That’s why.”
