Is it a hit, *hit or miss?

Sum 41 - Does This Look Infected by Scott Slapp

Sum 41 - Does This Look Infected 
Label: Island
Hit, *hit or Miss?:  *hit
Rating: 

Sum 41’s major label debut “All Killer, No Filler” may have seemed like false advertising but now we know where the filler went. 

It’s true that the band seems to have grown up a bit for this CD but the problem is they are still pretty juvenile and while the limited musical ability here would be fine for a high school band you have to wonder if major labels are simply looking for boybands with guitars instead of serious musical ability?  

On this CD Sum 41 try to squeak a little away from the whole “pop-punk” thing and inject some metal but the problem is they don’t have the chops for metal and the pop-punk is so damn played out and limited that is sounds generic. Sum 41 are nearly as lacklucker and devoid of originality as say New Found Glory but aside from some half assed attempts at metal riffing these guys don’t give us anything new and as a result they help put one more nail in the coffin of pop-punk. 

What hurts Sum 41 and pop-punk in general is the fact that it is so formulated that it’s hard to break out of the box. The same old riffs, the same sing/song vocal melodies delivered with a voice that makes you wish the singer would blow his f***ing nose already. It was fun when Green Day first did it but now almost a decade later it is played out and hasn’t evolved into anything new. Sum 41 make a half assed effort to break out of the box by doing a bad Offspring imitation but the sad fact of the matter is these guys sealed their fate long ago when they jumped on the pop-punk bandwagon. Maybe they didn’t have the talent to play anything else? If they want to alienate some of their Jr High School audience and take the full dive off the cliff and go in the direction of the Offspring than they might be worth listening to but as it is they are drowning in a pool of nasal tinged vocals and simply repetitive riffs – yeah pop punk, a genre of the music that is almost as long in the tooth as rap-rock and just doesn’t have the decency of dying quietly to make room for the next trend. 
 

Tracks: Hell Song  Over My Head (Better Off Dead)  My Direction  Still Waiting  A.N.I.C.  No Brains  All Messed Up  Mr. Amsterdam  Thanks For Nothing  Hyper-Insomnia-Para-Condrioid  Billy Spleen  Hooch

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