Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!: Day 286 - Sum 41

Update 31/10/16
Please let me say that I'm very sorry to discover that pretty much all the tracks from the Sum 41 album 13 Voices have been removed by You Tube. 

This has pretty much ruined the article below and I have deleted all the dead links and also have just put together a small playlist with the Promo videos and an interview with Deryck Whibley.

If you would like to listen to the album I'm sure it is probably on Spotify or another music streaming service (I don't personally use them so I can't say for sure).

Oh well, life goes on!

Doug
 

13 Voices - Sum 41

Hopeless Records

Produced by Deryck Whibley

Released 7th October 2016

****************

A little something that is still quite new today and not a band that I usually I've given a lot of time to but listening to 13 Voices, (the first Sum 41 album for five years and their first for Hopeless Records) I have to say I was quite taken by a few tracks on it and surprised myself that I enjoyed it so much.

I have to confess to not knowing an awful lot about the band beyond a few records here and there. I do know they originally hail from Canada and guitarist Dave Baksh has returned to the band in 2015 after leaving nine years before. He is joined by the only other surving founding member of the band - lead vocalist, guitarist, songwriter and producer Deryck Whibley.

They first hit the charts back in 2001 with the album All Killer No Filler that produced a Top 10 single in the UK with Fat Lip (#8, #66 US). The album peaked at #7 in the UK and in the USA #13.

That Debut album seems so far away now and frontman Whibley almost saw the words of their first hit become a reality in his own life:

 "I don't want to waste my time
Become another casualty of society."

On May 16, 2014, Deryck Whibley posted on his personal website, explaining that he had a liver and kidney failure due to extensive drinking (Read the Rolling Stone article that he talks a little about it). This near death experience would inform a lot of the songs that would end up on 13 Voices.

There's a certain amount of anger toward himself and the poison that almost took his life and a look at some of the song titles you might think it sounds way too dark and depressing, but songs like Breaking The Chain, War and even Fake My Own Death are actually very bright and life-affirming and denote a spark of that little thing called HOPE.

Dealing with issues like sobriety etc in the public eye is never an easy matter as there is always someone looking on hoping you will fall flat on your face again. But Deryck Whibley has clearly decided that is the way the battle is to be fought and where some see weakness in admitting addiction and seeking to rectify it and remain clean, others, like myself who are still on the road to recovery after  9,958 days (and counting) sober, hold him up and wish him daily strength on his journey.

I love the last line of the Alternative Press review of the album by Evan Lucy: "In life, the light at the end of the tunnel could be an oncoming train or the path to a better tomorrow, but it’s a road Whibley, now sober, is happy to walk with guitar in hand". That "path to a better tomorrow" is something a lot us broken ones long for.  

Every step that I take
All the chains that I break
It brings me one step closer

I'm breaking the chain from the life I knew
Beaten black and blue, it's time
To be face to face with the lies I choose
Throw the truth into the light
Make no mistake, I've paid my price
I've done my time with the devil in disguise
'Cause the life I knew has a different view
Tonight, I'm breaking the chain
 

 Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!