After 20 years of refusing to be a causality of society, Sum 41 is saying goodbye with their final album, Heaven :x: Hell, and a farewell tour.
Speaking with ABC Audio, frontman Deryck Whibley shares that he’d been having “thoughts of potentially moving on and doing something different for a few years.”
“A decision like that is, it’s like a divorce, it just doesn’t happen overnight,” Whibley says. “It’s something that slowly just kinda sits in the back of your mind.”
He continues, “You finally get to a point where, for me, it was once I sat back and listened to this record, I go, ‘You know, I think it’s time.'”
Whibley wrote much of the Heaven :x: Hell lyrics through stream of consciousness, which perhaps hint at his thoughts on ending Sum 41. For example, the closing song, “How the End Begins,” certainly feels like an intentional final statement, but Whibley had originally written it years ago for Sum 41’s 2019 album, Order in Decline.
“It said everything that I was feeling at that time, and I just happened to still feel it four years later when we started putting this record together,” Whibley says.
Heaven :x: Hell is out now, and Sum 41’s farewell tour will come to the U.S. in April. In a fitting full-circle moment, the lead Heaven :x: Hell single “Landmines” hit #1 on Billboard‘s Alternative Airplay chart, Sum 41’s first #1 since 2001’s “Fat Lip.” Now that he’s older, Whibley feels he has a greater appreciation for those kinds of achievements.
“I was in Indonesia, and I’ll remember waking up and seeing all the text messages and emails [about ‘Landmines’ hitting #1],” Whibley says. “It’s just little things like that.”
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