Sum 41

It's a funny old game, the world of Rock 'n' Roll. There are bands that spend years in the back of cold, battered mini-vans striving for success to no avail and, quite frankly, Sum 41 are not one of them. To say that their rise to the top has been meteoric would be like saying Manchester United’s weekend comeback was mildly impressive. You see, the Canadian punks last visit here, a mere month and a half ago, was supporting Nashville Pussy at the 400 capacity Garage. One hit single and a whole shit-load of TV and Radio coverage later they find themselves headlining to 1,500 people crammed inside tonight’s sold-out Astoria. The miracle of television, eh!?

This said you can’t imagine a whole channel dedicated to Kids Near Water, raising their main-stream status on the back of tonight’s dire set. Five minutes into their set and it becomes increasingly apparent that it’s the wrong band on the wrong night, a band that rely on feelings rather then feel-good anthems. They manage to attain a certain level of sincerity now and again and there’s a lot of passion on show but, unfortunately, passion doesn’t always write good songs. One after another, track after track manage to merge into one another, creating a 45 minute dirge of sounds with no grace shown to melody. Plenty of emotion but no edge to the songs on show.

After some impressive berating between the upper and lower deck of fans packed into the venue, Sum 41 hit the stage to a veritable mass of pre-pubescent squeals. Bashing out an intro of Diamond Head’s ‘Am I Evil?’ before diving head first into ‘Motivation’, it’s impossible to shake the feeling of deja-vu looming over the stage. Frontman Deryk Whilby, acts exactly like Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, only shorter twined with a voice that sounds like Pinky and Perky combined whilst on helium. The Eighties metal gimmick played throughout has already been acted out by punk stalwarts Less Than Jake and when they invite two girls on stage to ‘make-out’, I swear I saw the Bloodhound Gang do that in the very same building one year ago. There lies Sum’s problem, it’s good but everyone else has already wrote the book and got the proverbial t-shirt. Admittedly, the band’s romp through Metallica’s ‘4 Horsemen’ is amusing and ‘Fat Lip’ sounds as massive as you would expect, but there’s little else to sink your teeth into.

Sure, most of the audience tonight probably wouldn’t have witnessed half the bands mentioned above and for them I’m sure tonight was an amazing fun-filled evening. But personally, it was like watching ‘Star Wars’ at Christmas, while occasionally enjoyable, you’ve seen it a million times before.