Review Summary: The Same Old Sum 41 (With A Side Of POP)
Five years ago Sum 41 committed career suicide with
Screaming Bloody Murder, a record written during a time when frontman Deryck Whibley was struggling with a frightening addiction, divorce, and the cusp of death itself. All of which showed in a less-than-satisfactory record that polarized long time fans, unnerved by the subject matter, and to a further extent, the abysmal execution of a record struggling to attempt a “dark” theme. Whibley met a full recovery, thankfully, and with the picked up pieces of his band, returned with his sights set on a second shot at a darker record. That product is
13 Voices, which blurs the line between a “return” to form and a new direction. This record was also the return of longtime lead guitarist David Baksh and the introduction of drummer Frank Zummo, extending the band roster to 5 for the first time.
With their sights set, a beefed up cast, and a clear concise on Whibley’s side, the next chapter for Sum 41 was finally in place. Everything came together for… an average Sum 41 album, with the inclusion of a few more ballads than usual.
13 Voices, surprisingly, finds itself as the most inoffensive title in the band’s discography. At times, the record succeeds at pushing things in a darker direction (read: as dark as a mainstream rock band can get). Baksh brings a noticeable pick-up in energy with the guitar work, providing more than enough competent and catchy leads between tracks such as “Goddamn I’m Dead Again” and “Fake My Own Death”. Yet at the same time, the album falls into the motion of being an even more boring Sum 41 record than previous releases, from tiring out the same stylistic trends set up by Underclass Hero right down to Whibley singing about needing something to “feel” about. Only this time its directed from an unnamed love interest to whatever void his episodic addiction created.
While most of these borrowed ideas are fragmented amongst vocal effects or occasional riffs between verses, their constant presence bogs the record down over time. “There Will Be Blood” especially sounds like a repeat of previous Sum 41 tracks, recycling fuzzed out vocal effects that plagued the majority of
Underclass Hero and
Screaming Bloody Murder and featuring a bridge that does the exact same marching chug riff of the bridge from “Holy Image Of Lies”. “13 Voices” also gets in on the action, borrowing the same melodies heard throughout “Sick of Everyone” and “Happiness Machine” in its bridge and eventual solo. Hearing Sum 41 insistently recycling the exact same elements, and even directly lifting melodies, from their previous three records reflects the band taking it too safe. Either to cut corners or to avoid scrutiny from pulling off another
Screaming Bloody Murder, the band has put themselves on auto-pilot with a paint-by-numbers approach to songwriting, only, they’re repainting the same booklet used for their last handful of records.
And with the inclusion of Baksh, the album goes even further to begin sounding like songs already heard on even older records such as
Chuck and
Does This Look Infected?. It gets to the point where its hard to be interested in
13 Voices. As it becomes apparent that the group blows through any original ideas by the fifth track, opting out to settle with modge podging older, already used ideas over and over. Or even worse, employing plain and uninteresting piano ballads to pad out how little they had to work with. It doesn’t make for a bad record, not in the slightest, as there is fun to be had with the record’s heavier tracks and the album never goes as far as stooping low enough to steal from OTHER bands, but nonetheless it creates an overall uninteresting listen for a band that could have done a lot more for a fully realized comeback. At the end of it all, all you have is a slightly less interesting Sum 41 record, for better or for worse.
