Sum 41
Underclass Hero

THE REVIEW

Chuck 2 coming soon to your players and stereo... or maybe not!!!!

If only there had been a sequel borrowing a cinematic expression, but unfortunately, that's not the case. Seriously though, this is to say that many were expecting the return of the Canadian group on the scene, looking for confirmation of the good work seen in the previous release. People were hoping for yet another sonic evolution or the confirmation of a certain type of sound, but instead (and it pains me to admit it as a fan of the band), unfortunately, it sees a return to the origins. So much so that this "Underclass Hero" could be considered the perfect successor to another album by the band, namely "All Killer No Filler".

The quartet, now a trio with the departure of guitarist Brown Baksh, released this album in mid-summer 2007. And it really must be said that the overall sounds are just suited to the period, returning to the classic standards of pop-punk.

I don't know what drove the band to lighten their sound, surely the loss of commercial visibility and perhaps the decline in interest from a segment of fans who weren't used to certain metal sounds from "Chuck" must have led the band to make a sharp U-turn. Perhaps this sharp turn was also influenced by the departure of the guitarist (who formed an Iron Maiden tribute band) and was the most metal-driven soul of the quartet.

The fact is that pop-punk is now a fairly saturated genre with few ideas and many bands copying each other. In fact, the Sum, even though they pick up themes and intentions that led them to success in the early 2000s, rework the whole thing, at least partially, to change something. Let me explain better, remember the band's first two albums that basically contained x songs out of x all the same in terms of music and duration? Well, here the compositions or rather the structures and sound solutions expand and sometimes become more extensive. To give an idea, it's the evolution that Green Day had with the last studio album, moving a bit more towards rock. Musically speaking, at least personally, it almost seems like an attempt to create an album like "American Idiot", that is, alternating many soft moments, called ballads, with more classic pieces. Fortunately, however, some harder episodes where a certain energy emerges can be found. Just listen to "Speak of Evil", "Count Your Last Blessings", and "The Jester". The best episode seems to be "Count Your Last Blessings" which captures the atmosphere emphasized by the piano, but which turns out to be a nice addition to the anger of the guitar-dominated piece. Double slow-strong soul for "Speak of Evil" that alternates clean guitars and piano with strummed choruses and where a good dose of energy prevails, while "The Jester" comes very close to the past successes of the trio like "Hell Song" and "No Reason", where the use of acoustics intertwined with electrics is noticeable in the verses, characterized by a strange outro with the sound of footsteps moving away and a heartbeat.

The opening single, the title track, is a classic fast and pleasant-to-the-ear pop-punk piece (at times it recalls "Fat Lip" but is clearly better than the latter) and confirms that the band still manages to create pleasant singles at least. I also mention the ultra-fast-paced and brief "Kings of Contradiction", a drum gallop at a thousand miles an hour, and the slow and fairly long ballads "Best of Me" and "With Me" which are too boring and do not reach the levels of the wonderful "Pieces" contained in the previous album. While the funniest track is without a doubt "Ma Poubelle", a little entertaining song performed with an acoustic guitar for just under a minute, designed and sung by the drummer in French. The last track is the slow and exclusively acoustically played piece combined with a string section "So Long Goodbye".

The second single "Walking Disaster" is, to put it laughingly (but not too much), a sort of keyboard pop-punk and perfectly represents the contents of the album one by one, as it has speed but also quite a bit of melody.

An aspect of the work to reflect on is instead the usage which I would dare to call industrial of the keyboards which appear in multiple parts, at times enriching the pieces, but not always convincing. While there are good solos present in the various compositions.

While the award for the most controversial and discussed lyrics goes to "March of the Dogs" for its insults to the Bush administration. As for the lyrics of "Dear Father", (with an autobiographical stamp, a song of condemnation towards the father in which the singer paints him as a complete-unknown) nothing to say, but the song in its excessive catchiness is one of the worst on the album.

The cited pieces are the ones that stand out the most, but now let's do a classification on a sonic level. 15 songs that, if we can say so, take three different paths. Dominant is the vein that I call latte-coffee (pop-punk), followed by the melodic path of the pop-rock ballads (a novelty element of Sum41's production starting from "Chuck") and the energetic and more aggressive path which leans more towards punk-rock and includes the songs mentioned above (but unfortunately remains very, very marginal) and which picks up sounds seen in the two previous albums.

Another point of interest comes from listening to the bonus track "Look at Me" from this album and comparing it with the three from "Chuck". Well, this fact alone would be enough (for those who have listened to the two albums) to understand the huge difference between the two.

In sum, "Underclass Hero" proves to be just a pleasant album: better than the first two albums, but below the last two. This is the present... and the future?