5 out of 5

Label: Island

Produced by: Greig Nori

With hindsight, the megastar years of Sum 41 are even further removed from the wiener pop-punk of Blink 182 than I’d recognized at the time of this album’s (and to a certain extent, All Killer’s) release.  Working back with buddy Greig Nori, the production isn’t as sharp as Jerry Finn’s – edges are rounded off, the high-end of Steve’s on-point drumming is mixed much lower – but neither is the group suggestively pushed toward harmonizing and sticking to three chords; the metal influence Sum had claimed since the start convincingly rears its head on several tracks.  And part of their growth (because it is growth, displayed in more inventive arrangements of their songs, and more instruments than just guitar, bass and drums) is certainly age: Whibley, by no means a poor lyricist but never straying far from predictable, ups his topical ante to something a bit more wide-eyed and world weary than the insular high-school jams of Killer.  It’s a good balance on ‘Does,’ flipping back and forth between ‘we can make a difference’ and ‘fuck the man’ anthems, whereas the moralizing took more precedence on Chuck before slamming into relationship sap on Underclass Hero.

The songs are really where its at, though.  The compositions are insanely tight: Whibley and Baksh’s guitar interplay is a powerful mash of chugga-chugga riffs that dabble with fretboard-tapped solos – an appreciated, if at a surface level slight, turn away from the peppy sing-song singles from before – giving Jason’s bass a lot more room to improvise around the vocals and not just follow the chords.  And madman Steve, getting to whip out the double-bass drum.  We’re still clocking 12 songs at a little more than 30 minutes, but everything feels like it has its own identity here, making that an expansive half-hour instead of something that ends up getting a bit repetitive.  And whether intended or not, one of the tracks that follows the rap-lite format of Fat Lip  – ‘Thanks For Nothing’ – features amusing lyrics such as ‘This is who we are and nothing’s gonna change.’  I don’t really credit the group with the type of awareness to mock their previous single as such, and it’s more certainly just a generic punker anthem, but from my aged ear, it’s still interesting when a lot had actually changed for Sum 41.  And for the better, by my 5 star opinion.

It would take the group a bit to find their sound again (on Screaming Bloody Murder), but ‘Does This Look Infected?’ stands as a definite highpoint – swan song, maybe – of the punk-pop explosion of the early 00s, taking the memorable melodies of the genre and filtering it through a bunch of extremely skilled musicians’ not-so-secret love for thrash and metal.