Sum 41 announced they were working on a new double album called Heaven X Hell earlier this year. The album is half punk and half heavy metal, which was great news for fans of every era of Sum 41. Then came the bad news – Sum 41 is also calling it quits in 2024.
In a new interview with Canada's CJAY 92, Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley explained why the band was ending and why Heaven X Hell is the best record to end things on.
"I'm a big believer in that the music tells you what to do, and it just told me this should be a double album. Once that album was finished, I'd realized, and I'd been thinking this for a while, that I felt like after all these years with my 1,000 percent focus on Sum 41 all day, every day, I felt like I don't have much more of that in me to continue past this record."
He continued: "I've been in this band since I was in tenth grade, and I just… I'm getting to a point where I'm thinking, I'd like to put some focus and energy into something else. And I felt this is probably the best record we've ever made. And I think this version of the band is the best we've ever been live. And I thought, what a way to just go out on this one."
When asked if Heaven X Hell was specifically written to be Sum 41's final album, Whibley said he wasn't even planning on doing a last Sum 41 record.
"There was no pressure, because we didn't really know that we were going to make this the last record. When I started writing songs for this record, I didn't even know I was writing songs for Sum 41. I thought I was writing for other people, because at the beginning of the pandemic, I was getting asked by managers and record labels if I'd work with some of their artists. They were looking for pop-punk stuff. And so I just started writing songs, and I just happened to like them and I didn't wanna give them away. So I kept them."
He added: "I didn't even know we were making a double album. I didn't even know it was going to be what it became. It wasn't until all the music was just written. I was just writing for the sake of writing, and when I listened to it all back, it just kind of spoke to me."
