£4.99 in HMVs sale? Go on then! I wouldn’t say Sum 41 is a guilty pleasure, but I don’t mind them that much on record if I’m in the mood. Live they’re pretty appalling, but then most bands of their ilk are so I guess I shouldn’t complain. ‘Half Hour Of Power’ is the record before the singer went out with Paris Hilton and then Avril – and boy can you tell.
This is pretty average all the way through. The band try and distance themselves from the ‘punk’ tag, but there’s a definite nod towards skate and pop-punk bands here, albeit not a very good one. The production is rough and the guitars lack bite, detracting from the quality of the album as a whole. Despite these problems, Sum 41 did show some potential with this CD, but end up being a mile off the finished article. ‘Machine Gun’ is pretty good, production aside, ‘THT’ the most ‘punk’ track on the record, while ‘Summer’ is probably the best song. So good infact it was re-recorded for ‘All Killer, No Filler’. ‘Makes No Difference’ isn’t bad in a pretty basic way either. I guess the comparison to Blink 182‘s ‘Cheshire Cat’ has been made before – compare these records to the band’s respective latter day material and you can see their, erm, progression.
The rest is pretty bland and average. ‘Second Chance For Max Headroom’ wants to be NOFX pretty badly, or any skate-punk band, but it fails miserably. I guess this album is the perfect example of what production can really do for you. The songs aren’t that bad, but they’re not that much better than those on the next record – which went through the major label production machine, MTV and into the bedrooms of millions of teenage fans. It’s alright for some…
www.sum41.com
Paul