Sum 41 heading for Saskatoon.

Well-known Canadian group on tour for new album.

Hello everyone, I’m back once again with another band interview and this one’s a real treat. From the creators of hits like “Fat Lip” and “Into Deep”, as well as a new album, Order in Decline, which is available for purchase, I was very fortunate to get in contact with Canadian rock group, Sum 41. Below you’ll find the interview with bassist Jason “Cone” McCaslin and his thoughts on touring and the band’s sound:  

So, Sum 41 is heading to Saskatoon to perform at the Saskatoon Exhibition, how does that feel for the band? 

Yeah, it’s going to be great. It’s been awhile since we’ve been there, so it’s bought time that we did a show [laughter]. I feel like we should be doing a little more in Canada, and we’re trying to work on getting out to Canada a lot more. 

Nice, and how’s the lead up to the new album, Order in Decline, been for the band? 

Oh yeah, it’s releasing on the 19th [at the time of the interview], and we started back up touring at the end of March, and we’ve been just going since March to promote the new album and then once the album comes out we’re going to  start a full fledged world tour to promote it. So yeah, we’ll be touring for a while. 

And how’s the promotion been for the new single, “Out for Blood”, how’s the response been for that? 

It’s been great, it’s always hard to pick a first single. You know, you make like ten new songs for an album and you kind of have to go throw them and pick which song you like the best. The consensus was “Out for Blood” or either “45” (which is another song) was going to be the first single and then we just narrowed it down to out for “Out for Blood”. ‘Cause we thought; “well it kind of had everything going for it that the rest of the album does, so it’s a job representation of how the album is.” It’s got everything, it’s got a guitar solo, it’s got a couple of kick drums, it’s fast and melodic, so we just decided to with “Out for Blood” and, so far, a lot of our fans really like it. First couple of times we ever played “Out for Blood” live was in Europe and it felt like an old song already. For some reason, people already knew the words and everything in the back. It was cool to see. 

So, I know the group started out as pop-punk and it feels like Sum 41 has moved more towards hard rock, how has that change been for you? 

Yeah, I think it’s just been what we’re into and growing. Like, when the first album was released in 2001, we were 21 years old, so when we were recording that album, we were 19 and 20 years old. So that was just our sound at the time, and we had just come out of high school as well. Then, as you get better as musicians, I mean we’ve always loved metal music and we’re just starting to… well, not starting, we’ve been doing heavy music since, basically, Chuck from the 2000’s. It’s just incorporating different influences that we listen to in our music. You know, we all grew up listening to metal, we all grew up listening to punk, so we don’t really shy away from trying to incorporate all of our influences into our record. And I think it’s just a natural evolution towards getting heavier and a little bit more aggressive and that’s kind of what we’re into. And it’s really fun to play live. 

It’s great to hear those influences evolve and grow along with you guys, now, heading away from that, when the band looks back at songs like “Into Deep” and the like, do you ever get tired of performing them, or do you still enjoy rocking them on stage? 

Yeah, we all still love playing those songs ’cause the crowd loves them, right? Those are like the first songs that people ever heard from us, so I think if the crowd hated them, like if they rolled their eyes and went; “Oh, this old, shitty song” after we played them it’d be different. But that doesn’t happen, like when we play “Fat Lip” or “Into Deep”, all the old songs, those are still some of the biggest reactions we get... And those songs, just over the years for some reason, maybe it’s the way we play them, have gotten heavier on their own [laughter]. I don’t know if it’s because we have three guitar players or whatever it is, they don’t feel out of place. Next to our new song, “Out for Blood”, like that song is heavier and more aggressive, but you play “Into Deep” next to it and it wouldn’t feel out of place.  

So last question I wanted to ask was, other than the tour and the new album releasing, what does the future hold for the band? 

Uh, I think that’s about it. We’re planning a fall tour in the U.S. and then we’re talking about a Canadian-based tour in the near future. We try to do what we do for every record; we try to get through the whole world in a year or two and then we work on a new record [laughter].