August 17 2007
Sum 41 is of course a band which needs no introduction, so straight to the point then, where have you been for the last three years?
Cone McCaslin of Sum 41: Since Chuck came out in 2004, we toured that for just over a year. Then we ended in September 2005, that’s when we starting taking our break. Over that time, I guess we started writing new songs in early 2006 but just kind of loosely and not very…you know there was no time constraint or anything like that. We’re practicing and demo-ing throughout all 2006 and we started recording in November of 2006. So since November of 06 we’ve kind of just been getting ready for the new album, basically.
Heaviest: Lots of things have changed since your last record… losing Dave and changing your management company, has it been a struggle?
Sum 41: I don’t think so because as for the management company, that had really run its course and it just wasn’t working anymore. I don’t think we actually would’ve made another album if we had to stay with that management company. We’ve known our old manager, Greg, since we were 18 and it just stopped working for whatever reason. We just kind of grew apart after all those years. It was actually kind of a load off all of our shoulders. I’ve actually talked to Greg since, and he’s actually feeling really good about it too. He wasn’t at the time but I think he feels less stressed now. As for Dave, it would’ve been probably a tougher album to make if Dave was in the band, because he would’ve been wanting something different in our music and us three, me, Deryck and Steve were all on the same page, and Dave would’ve been on a different page…a whole different book altogether. So I think the whole thing was good and worked out for the best.
Heaviest: How do you think these changes have altered band life? (if at all)
Sum 41: I don’t really think it has. When Dave was in the band, he was kind of growing apart from all of us over the past 6 or 7 years. He always just had a separate life than we all had. When we went home off tour, us 3 would call each other, which is weird because when you live on a bus with someone for 10 months, you’d think that when you get home, you wouldn’t want to talk to each other. We would actually still call each other once in awhile because we were actually friends, and Dave…he’d never call us and we would never call him. So I just think that he wanted to do something different. He wanted to be the front man of his own band and he’s doing a heavy metal band now. We just started growing apart.
Heaviest: Well you do of course have a new record, Underclass Hero. Tell us a little about it.
Sum 41: Underclass Hero came out on the 24th of July. It’s got 14 tracks. Musically, it’s a little less heavy than the last album…but it’s probably the most melodic album we’ve ever done and lyrically, in my opinion, it’s the best we’ve ever had. There’s just a lot of personal songs that Deryck wrote that are really good, I think. There’s a few slow songs on it, but it’s still a very much high energy, fast Sum 41 album.
Heaviest: Did you feel any pressure to write the record? Was it an organic, natural process?
Sum 41: This one was the most natural. At the end of the last tour, we weren’t even sure when or if we were going to make another album. We just hadn’t talked about it and we were just so burnt out that I think the last show we were like ‘Alright, see ya. See ya later. Hugs’ and that was it. We didn’t say like ‘So um, when do you want to start doing demos?’ It was kind of just like go home and we didn’t know when we would start writing and when we were going to start practicing again…if. I always thought we would make another album but there was just no talk about another album. This one was just really natural in a way that it just happened. The record label didn’t say ‘No we want an album by the summer’. We just told everyone, our management and record label, we’re just going to write songs and we’ll do an album when we do it and they just kind of gave us a time.
Heaviest: How do you feel it differs from your previous material?
Sum 41: It’s definitely the most melodic album we’ve done…All of our other albums are just a collection of 12 or 13 songs or however many are on it. This one was really thought out in making each song kind of go into the next one. The whole album as a whole makes sense when you listen to it instead of just throwing, like we have before, 12 songs on an album. This one, some songs run into the next, there’s little interludes to songs. I think just listening to 1 song or 3 songs on the album won’t make as much sense as if you listened to the whole album front to back. I think you really get it when you listen to all 14 songs back to back, in a row.
Heaviest: What are your personal highlights of the album?
Sum 41: I’m really proud of Deryck for being able to produce this album. The fact that Dave isn’t in the band anymore and we did lose our manager, there were a lot of doubts from a lot of people. There were a lot of fans that were saying ‘I don’t think you guys can move on without Dave. It’s not going to be the same’…Greg, our manager, was also our producer and we lost him. There’s a lot of people doubting us and I think I’m most proud about the fact that we did this album as a 3-piece and I think that’s the best album we’ve ever done. That’s actually where the title, Underclass Hero, came from as well. It was more of an underdog thing that we thought we were kind of starting at the lowest point of our career because it’s just the 3 of us and we actually succeeded to make our best album.
Heaviest: You recently played my hometown – London. I missed it due to being lame. How did the new songs go down? Were you surprised at any responses?
Sum 41: That show was awesome. We haven’t been to London in a long time and we didn’t actually do a full UK tour on the last album…we didn’t know what to expect. The Astoria sold out so quickly and we were excited about that. I think we only played probably 3 new songs that night but they went over great. The old songs obviously went over really well because everyone knew them. The crowd was really receptive and we’re going to actually do a full UK tour coming up.
Heaviest: If there was one message which you hope the record conveys to the listener, what do you think it would be?
Sum 41: That’s a tough one. There isn’t just one message on this album…well actually there is kind of. This whole album is about the confusion and frustration in modern society but there are a lot of different themes on the album about that so it’s not just one message. This album is just kind of a really aggressive, fast and slow, classic Sum 41 sounding album.
Thanks to Cone and the rest of Sum 41!