May 2014. Shocking images of Deryck Whibley are in the news, the Sum 41 frontman looking close to death following kidney and liver failure. Admitting to hitting the bottle too hard, and for too long, Whibley was hospitalised for a month. Flash forward to 2016. Against all the odds, he and his band are celebrating the success of ‘13 Voices’, a triumphant return to form. But one thing became apparent on the mammoth three-year tour that followed. Just as Whibley had got better, the world itself had seemed to get sick. It wasn’t just in the United States, where the shadow of the 45th President loomed large, but across Europe too. Everywhere Sum 41 ventured, they found chaos and discord. Out of this mayhem, however, ideas began to form for album number seven.
Today, Deryck is keen to clarify that ‘Order In Decline’ was never meant to be a political protest record. Instead, though, world events soon forced his hand. “I set out not to do it, and in fact, I did everything I could do not to make it political,” he begins, “But in a way, it kinda just came out that way I guess. To me, I just felt it was a personal record. I’m not speaking about specific policies, or topics, or referencing exact things. It’s more just about my feelings about stuff right now, and there’s some anger and frustration in there.”
Touring the world at such a fragmented time couldn’t help but affect his state of mind, the singer having a unique perspective to see the bigger picture. “Every time we went to a new country, it’s like there was chaos. All over the world, wherever we went. Usually caused by someone or something different, but it seemed to be pretty much the same thing every time. It’s such a divided world, and there’s a lot of hatred and racism out there.”
Though anger and frustration at the state of the world run through all of ‘Order In Decline’, one particular focus for Whibley’s ire comes to the fore in ’45 (A Matter Of Time)’. Refusing to mention him by name, lyrics like “You’re something to the few but nothing to me, someone as twisted and sick as can be… You proved that a real man is something you’re not,” leave no doubt as to Whibley’s feelings.
Though he later sings that he is losing faith in humankind, today he strikes a more optimistic tone. “It’s hard to find hope sometimes, but I think it’s there. For me, history repeats itself, everything goes in cycles, and that’s where we are at right now. So this too will pass, like everything.”
In truth, it is rare to find a band this far down the line who still have this much to talk about. Laughing, Deryck happily admits to having plenty to say right now. “Whenever I set out to make a record, I always start by saying, ‘What the fuck am I gonna say? What do I have to say?’ And then I just start coming out with words, and you hope for the best. Hopefully, they mean something or they matter to somebody.”
This time round, it was very different. “I was writing a lot on the road. Through that whole time touring ’13 Voices’, just being on stage and travelling around, playing our new songs and old songs together, there just seemed such a reaction from fans, and I found it really inspiring. I would go back to the bus, or I would be in the hotel room on a day off, and just started writing little riffs, little things here and there.”
It would have been easy to take a break after that exhaustive touring, especially coming so soon after such serious health issues. But Whibley’s creative urge was having none of it. “It just came out. I didn’t really think about whether we should keep going, or whether we should take a break. Usually, the way music works is it tells you what to do. It just kinda comes, and I’m like, ‘oh, well I guess this is happening’. I have no choice in the matter,” he laughs.
With the new line-up fully established (founding guitarist Dave Baksh returned to the band midway through the ’13 Voices’ sessions), there was also a new dynamic to explore more fully. “It was great,” he raves. “The thing I loved about it the most was that we really became the band that we are on stage. Because that whole last tour cycle, we were learning each other and becoming a different band. We’d never been a five-piece before, we had a different drummer, and we were figuring out how to have three guitar players. So every night we were kinda getting a little bit better.”
That followed into the writing process. “The only way I can describe it is probably when a TV show gets into its second season, and the characters are really developed, and the writers really know what to write for each character,” he explains. “I felt like I knew what everybody’s strengths were. It made it exciting, and then when we got into the studio, all of those guys are far better players than I could ever be so when it all comes to life, then it becomes really exciting!”
‘Order In Decline’ is potentially Sum 41’s heaviest album yet, as befits some of the subject matters. “I would never say that we are a metal band now, or are trying to be, or that it’s even a metal album,” he offers. “We’ve always had influences, and I think that there’s a heavier side that’s always been there, and we probably lean on that heavier side on this record.”
In some ways, it’s no surprise that the anger and frustration that Whibley felt at times spilled over. “I don’t think it was intentional; it was just because I was writing on the road, and I was in that mindset of playing. When I’m writing something, I just play guitar, and if it excites me, then I feel like I’ve got something. It just felt like I wanted to play music on stage, and this was the stuff that came out.”
What came out slams hard at times. ‘A Death In The Family’ is a rampaging beast of a track, while ‘Out For Blood’ seems to visibly seethe at the world. But some of the tracks are heavy in a completely different manner.
‘Never There’, a hugely powerful song about Deryck’s absent father, is Sum 41 like you’ve never heard, piano-led and deeply personal. “It wasn’t going to make the record!” he admits. “It was one of those weird songs where, when I started writing it, I didn’t really want to go there. Not because I was afraid of it, or that it was too emotional, but it just seemed boring to me. I don’t really think about not having met my father, mostly because my mum was such a strong single mother and we had such a great relationship. I just never felt like I needed to think about him or worry about him.”
Perhaps it was the health issues or just the passing of years, but it felt like a song that needed to come. “Obviously it was coming out in a natural way, so I felt that there’s something there in my subconscious. I owed it to myself to see this song through and write it.”
Still not intending to publish it under his own name, the original intention was to give it away. “My manager told me he thought I was crazy after hearing it; he said it was one of the heaviest things I’d ever written. Just in a completely different way.”
Never afraid to add emotional depth to a record that at times feels like pages torn from a private diary, ‘Turning Away’ and ‘Catching Fire’ act as poignant, emotional bookends to the thunder and fury within ‘Order In Decline’. While the former deals with the end of a toxic relationship of sorts, the latter delves into several different elements.
“‘Catching Fire’ is wrapped up in a bunch of different things. I originally wrote it as a love song for my wife, and the thought of not knowing what to do if I lost in her any kind of way. And at the same time, it just seemed like there was such a rise in suicides, so that was on my mind as well. It seemed like there was one after another, whether it was Anthony Bourdain, Robin Williams, Chester Bennington, Chris Cornell. So you know, that was also on my mind. And I just wrote it in the way of being from the perspective of the person who’s lost.”
After such a major health scare, there’s a feeling of catharsis around some of the writing, a sense that Deryck’s new sobriety is forcing things out in a different way. “It must be cathartic, but I never thought about that. Somebody else brought that up to me, and said ‘If you didn’t write all this stuff, it would probably have come out in your life in a different way, a negative way’. I was like wow, I never thought about it like that.”
Admitting that he now feels better than he did in the band’s very earliest of days, his lifestyle change is paying dividends. “I feel good, better than ever, really. Mentally I definitely feel way better, but even physically I have way more energy than I used to back then. I used to come off stage and feel lots more beaten-up when I was 19 than I do now.”
With excitement about the band reaching that point in a career where the back catalogue has enough depth to mix things up on a nightly basis, Deryck is clearly stoked about Sum 41’s upcoming tour and new lease of life. “It feels really cool, by having these different styles in our music now, we go on a ride during the show. There are dynamics now, different vibes, different sounds.”
Despite initially considering taking a breather from writing, he admits ideas are starting to creep in. With a global tour planned for 2020, one thing is for sure. There will be no shortage of inspiration in a world that is showing no signs just yet of slowing down the chaos. The order may remain in decline, but it’s going to be rich pickings for Deryck Whibley.
Taken from the August issue of Upset. Sum 41’s album ‘Order in Decline’ is out 19th July.
