Sum 41 didn’t intend to write their own eulogy. Still, it speaks volumes that the Canadian band finished work on their eighth album — a sprawling 21-track opus that covers both their pop-punk side and their metal side — and knew it was the perfect way to close the book on two-and-a-bit decades together.
‘Heaven :x: Hell’ is a distillation of almost every sound they’ve explored in that time so, conceptually, it’s a fitting way to say goodbye. Even then, they’re signing off with some of their best material since their imperial phase.
The amped-up Landmine recaptures the lightning-in-a-bottle feeling of a band doing it all for the first time, while the majestic ballad Radio Silence is begging listeners to raise their lighters.
Then again, aside from the glorious ‘90s time capsule I Can’t Wait, it still sounds like a stride forward rather than a nostalgia trip.
Indeed, on the other side of the album, I Don’t Need Anyone is an inspired, distinctly 2024 slice of punky post-hardcore with both bite and a modern lustre to it that feels like a definitive expansion of Sum 41’s heavier side.
For the most part, Sum 41 also handle the double album baggage pretty well. It doesn’t drag thanks to its two distinct halves, even if the pop-punk side (‘Heaven’) is stronger than the heavy metal side (‘Hell’) by virtue of it having more memorable songs (and not having a fun-yet-superfluous cover ofThe Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black).
It’s also nice to have a long goodbye. Indeed, by the time the philosophical if on the nose How The End Begins rolls around, the feeling of this being the last new Sum 41 song hangs heavy in the air. Nonetheless, with the strength of material here, this is the sign-off they deserve.
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