“We’re getting old,” insists Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley, 24. It’s a theme the Canadian punk band comes back to repeatedly on their fourth album, due in late September.
The band previewed new material during a brief layover in New York, where they rehearsed for upcoming summer festival concerts in Europe. Although the new songs have a serious bent, Whibley says they’re not necessarily out of character with the group’s early hits like “Fat Lip” and “In Too Deep.”
“We’ve always written from our life experiences,” he says. “In the beginning all we did was go to school and party, all that stupid shit, but as we get older some serious stuff is happening to people around us. It’s similar to our last record in that sense.”
Of the five as-yet-untitled songs Whibley previewed, two sound closer in spirit to the hardcore sing-alongs of Pennywise; one is strangely similar to Metallica’s early thrash classic “Battery”; and two are ballads. One early standout is an acoustic, Brit-pop-style number where Whibley seems to channel Oasis’ Liam Gallagher.
“I tried to be a singer for once,” he says. “And that track, that’s about bands who are obsessed with not growing up. We, on the other hand, are really enjoying it.”
