Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley Announces Double Album ‘Heaven and Hell’

Deryck Whibley made Sum 41’s upcoming album, Heaven and Hell, nearly by chance.

It was the peak of the pandemic and Whibley wasn’t actually feeling impressed. And, for the primary time, he was “simply attempting to loosen up,” he tells Rolling Stone. Principally, he was centered on his different gig outdoors of his band: being a first-time dad.

With a agency lockdown in place, the one manner for Whibley and his spouse Ari to get out of the home was to place their new child in a automobile seat and drive round L.A. for hours on finish. For a lot of of these rides, Whibley would curate particular playlists to entertain their child. A kind of playlists was crammed “with the entire punk-rock stuff I listened to after I was in highschool that I hadn’t listened to in years,” he says. “[Listening to this music] kickstarted me into writing once more.”

It was additionally round this time that Common hit up Whibley asking if he had any vault tracks to characteristic on a potential Twentieth-anniversary reissue of the group’s iconic 2001 LP All Killer, No Filler. He didn’t. So as an alternative he supplied to put in writing just a few tracks in the identical model that birthed now-classics like “Fats Lip” and “In Too Deep.”

“As soon as I had about 4 or 5 songs, I used to be like, ‘You recognize what? I like all these. I’m not giving these to anyone,’ ” he says. Mix the newborn automobile rides soundtracked by bands like NOFX, Pennywise, and Good Riddance with the All Killer, No Filler anniversary, and Whibley was in a full early-2000s pop-punk temper. “I wasn’t actually attempting to start out a file,” he admits.

What got here out of this artistic renaissance was Heaven and Hell. The primary a part of the two-part LP, often known as “Heaven,” faucets again into the present nostalgia surrounding pop-punk — a mode Whibley began writing in earlier than it turned a factor once more: “When that occurred, I used to be like, ‘What sort of luck is that?’ ” he says. The album’s second, heavier facet (“Hell”) options metallic tracks nearer to the band’s most up-to-date sound. “As I listened to nearly all of it, it simply form of dawned on me,” he recollects. “‘Did I simply make a double file by chance?’ “

Whibley’s lyrics on the album stem from private expertise. The Hell facet works by means of the anxieties and confusion he’s confronted in his life, particularly in the course of the pandemic. “A number of the metallic stuff comes with a whole lot of anger for individuals who have stolen from me and harm me previously,” Whibley says, referring to previous relationships and former enterprise companions. A number of the lyrics even are directed towards a former supervisor who stole “a lot of cash” and was “mentally abusive” to Whibley and Sum 41. “He was a darkish particular person to be round so I discover that regardless that it was years in the past, it nonetheless creeps out in my music now,” he says. “I can cope with stress and the problems that go on in life most likely as a result of I write about it and I get all of it out.”

As for the Heaven facet, count on to listen to concerning the happiness that comes with turning into a dad, together with rather more “constructive vitality.” He explains that in the course of the pandemic, “Plenty of different individuals had been retreating to issues that made them really feel good previously,” and that he did the identical in bringing again Sum 41’s authentic pop-punk sound. “There’s some bizarre nostalgia that kicked in due to the pandemic,” he says. “All of it made sense to me why pop-punk is coming again: it’s feel-good music. There’s one thing that’s blissful about it. One thing younger and harmless and free.”

The group can also be set to go out on the Blame Canada tour alongside Easy Plan this summer time. And Whibley is greater than prepared. “Making data is like the required evil to get again out on the street. That’s how we’ve all the time checked out it,” he says with amusing. “It’s been two years and I feel we’re gonna fall proper again into it. I’m simply actually excited.”