Earlier this year, Sum 41 announced their eighth studio album, titled Heaven X Hell, would arrive in 2024, offering fans a double dose of their Pop-Punk and Metal sides. This week, frontman Deryck Whibley joined Audacy's Dallas to give us a little more background on the forthcoming release, tour dates, and more.
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Deryck has been keeping himself busy since Sum 41’s last studio release, 2019’s Order In Decline. “Like a week before the COVID lockdown started, we had our first kid,” Whibley tells Dallas. “That filled the time for us during that whole year,” he admits, “and then we had another baby about nine months ago -- a girl.”
Bursts of creativity would certainly be expected with two little ones around, but for Deryck and his wife, Ariana, it was the times they were trying to quiet things down that proved to be most fruitful. “The funny thing about that is, it did inspire me in a certain way while we were in the lockdowns and the only thing you could do to get out of the house was kind of drive around or walk around. So, we would get out and go in the car and just drive around for a couple of hours," Whibley explains.
“When our son was crying and having a fit and melting down, we put on music, and the only thing that he would stop crying to was like, 90s Punk Rock music -- the stuff I used to listen to in high school,” he says. “I made a long playlist of all my favorite bands, like NOFX and Lagwagon, Strung Out, Pennywise, Bad Religion... all the stuff I used to listen to in high school that I didn't really listen to as much anymore. That started to inspire me to start writing some music and it kind of came out sounding in the same vein as the early stuff we used to do.”
“In a way, he had a huge influence on my writing,” Deryck adds, “but I wasn't expecting it that way. I wasn't looking at him for inspiration. It just kind of happened.” Now three years old, he says his son Lydon's favorite band right now, “and has been for a long time, is Metallica... We play all kinds of music in the house, but we don't really play the kids' stuff,” he says. “We don't really play anything other than stuff that we like. He's gravitated to certain things that he loves... he's picked out some cool bands that he likes. The problem with it is that he wants to hear the same song over and over and over again because that's what toddlers do. He'll get on ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and want to hear it 15 times in a row.”
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With the new album next year, tour dates are sure to follow, marking the last time the band hits the road together. “I don't necessarily think we can hit every city, I think we're gonna do our best to hit every country and major city that we can," Deryck explains. "We’re going to try to hit everywhere that we have before, and say goodbye to people that we know and we love, and we're gonna miss.”
Fitting all of the band’s fan favorites and new music into one show will no doubt be a daunting task. “All I can say is, I've thought about it and I've come up with nothing yet,” Whibley says. “I've looked at all these songs and tried to fit them in and I haven't figured out what we're gonna do yet... but we're gonna try to play a bit of everything, obviously. It's tough because we have a new record as well and it's a double album, 'Heaven and Hell,' and one side's Pop Punk and one side is Metal... Trying to fit those all in with everything and make it make sense is not easy. But I think that's kind of what we're good at. That's what our whole career has been like... playing these different kinds of music and making it all work together.”
The band gave fans a Heaven-ly first taste of the upcoming Heaven X Hell double release with the Pop-Punk-flavored single “Landmines,” released in September. The next song, Deryck reveals, will be taken from the Hell side. “It'll be more of the heavy side of 41 for sure,” he promises.
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Fret not; ”I think a lot of this stuff is coming soon,” Whibley says. “It's all being worked on as we speak. We're not just sitting around like, not doing anything. We’re trying to figure it all out and we will have dates, we will have an album release date, tour dates, new song fairly soon.”
Listen to Dallas' full chat with Sum 41's Deryck Whibley above, and stay tuned for even more conversations with your favorite artists right here on Audacy.