After 27 years, Sum 41 are calling it quits. In a social media post shared on Monday, May 8, the band announced their plans to officially break up following one last round of celebrations, including their forthcoming eighth and final album Heaven and Hell, and one last accompanying world tour.
“Sum 41 will be disbanding,” the post stated. “We will still be finishing all of our current upcoming tour dates this year, and we’re looking forward to releasing our final album ‘Heaven x Hell,’ along with a final worldwide headlining tour to celebrate. Details will be announced as soon as we have them.”
Heaven x Hell, which Sum 41 first announced over a year ago, still has no set release date. Structured as a two-part LP, the album will return to the band’s nostalgic pop-punk sound on the Heaven half, while Hell holds the more metallic sounds they’ve toyed with more recently.
The announcement of their final plans together as a band comes exactly 22 years to the date of the release of Sum 41’s debut album, All Killer No Filler.
“Being in Sum 41 since 1996 brought us some of the best moments of our lives,” the band’s statement continued. “We are forever grateful to our fans both old and new, who have supported us in every way. It is hard to articulate the love and respect we have for all of you and we wanted you to hear this for us first.”
They added: “For now, we look forward to seeing all of you skumfuks on the road and are excited for what the future will bring for each of us.”
The band’s current members include frontman Deryck Whibley, Dave Baksh, Jason McCaslin, Tom Thacker, and Frank Zummo. Apart from a few short stints with Jon Marshall, Richard Roy, and Mark Spicoluk in the nineties, the only long-standing member no longer in Sum 41 is drummer Steve Jocz, who left the band with no explanation in 2013, three years before their big comeback.
“We don’t speak anymore,” Whibley told Rolling Stone in 2016. “I have nothing bad to say about him, but I never miss people who bail. It’s just something in me since people have been leaving me since before I was born, like my dad. If you’re not here, you don’t exist to me.”
But when he spoke to Rolling Stone last year, the frontman found a productive use for this same kind of residual anger. “Some of the metal stuff comes with a lot of anger for people who have stolen from me and hurt me in the past,” he said, explaining the Hell half of the upcoming album. “I can deal with stress and the issues that go on in life probably because I write about it and I get it all out.”
Returning to pop punk on their final album will be a complete full-circle closing for Sum 41. “There’s some weird nostalgia that kicked in because of the pandemic. It all made sense to me why pop-punk is coming back: it’s feel-good music,” he added. “There’s something that’s happy about it. Something young and innocent and free.”
Closing their statement, the band wrote: “Thank you for the last 27 years of Sum 41.”
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