Sum 41
All Killer No Filler
The Band: Deryck Whilbey- vocals, guitar
Dave Baksh- guitar
Cone- Bass
Steve-O- Drums
All Killer No Filler. Ah, a stunning example of the good ole days of pop punk. Before the black hair, sad lyrics and supposed maturity. Yes this in my opinion is Sum 41 at their best. Probably the best adjective I could think of to describe this album is “fun”. Lots of fast poppy riffs. Fairly well-written lyrics with no real serious topic. Just about “drinking in the back of an el Camino”, and things of that nature. Good music to jump around to. House party format I guess you could call it. But don’t get me wrong I’m not saying this album was perfect. It did have some flaws. I found the instrumentals to be a tad simple and contrary to album title I think there was “sum” (yeah, I’m funny) filler. But none the less I still enjoy this album because of its child like charm.
You see, this was only Sum 41’s second album. They were just starting out really, just finding there way. They hadn’t yet been herded into the proverbial band wagon of “maturity”. Innocent would be a good word to describe them at this point in their career. Like a six year old child screaming like a monkey atop the jungle gym on his playground, not caring what anyone else thinks. That’s what I meant by “innocent”. They were just doing there thing, singing about whatever they felt like singing about. Unfortunately this didn’t last. Sum were eventually herded in to the group of maturity along with other bands like Green Day and Blink 182. Oh well, this era of their career was fun while it lasted.
Time to dissect the instrumentals. As always, I’ll start with the guitar. Which was more than adequate. Although, some of it was a little basic. Loads of power chords and some octaves here and there as well. But I didn’t mind that aspect of the album as much as I usually do with other bands. Green Day for example. Not to bash Green Day they were just the first band that came to mind. Anyways I guess the power chords sort of added to the “child like innocence” of the album. Nothing fancy just fast fun riffs. I’m not sure if that makes sense to any of you, but oh well. There was also some commendable riffage on the album. Ranging from soft cleaner riffs, to fast pace distorted high-pitched riffs. An example of a softer riff would be the intro to “In To Deep”. An example of a more distorted high pitched riff would be the pre-verse riff in “Pain For Pleasure”. There were also a couple of good scattered about. Most of then were short and choppy, but they were better than nothing I suppose. An example of a decent solo from the album would be “In To Deep”.
Now onto the bass. All in all it was pretty much “par”. It wasn’t too great but not too shabby either. In most tracks the bass just played the root notes of what the guitar was playing. Although, it did have it’s moments here and there. Little bridges and things in the occasional track. Although, none of them were too spectacular. I find that Cone isn’t really a very good bassist but he usually makes up for his lack of talent with stage antics. Things like jumping around being silly. He seems to be more of a tool used to draw peoples attention to the band than an actual bass player. To sum up the bass a few words would be adequate, decent sufficient, ample and good sort of.
Last but not least the drums. Like the bass they were kind of “meh”. But I suppose they were a little better than the bass. There were many wonderful little fills scattered about. But I would’ve liked to see more. They were like really tasty margarine spread far to thin over a piece of toast. Other than that the album, like most pop-punk albums consisted entirely of simple beats. There’s nothing wrong with that, though. Steve-O also managed to stay on time throughout the entire album. I think he has the potential to be a better drummer, but it’s hard to for him to throw in anything too complicated because of the rest of the bands simple instrumentals.
Pros: Fun listen
Some good instrumentals
Moderate vocals
Cons: A tad too simple for my tastes
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Recommended Track: Motivation, Pain For Pleasure, In Too Deep, Fat Lip
Unlike I do in most of my other reviews, I don’t “strongly” recommend looking into this. Unless of course, you’re a huge pop-punk fan. If so, have at it. But other than that this is just a fun listen from time to time. It’ll always have it’s place in my music collection as a reminder of the olden days. I’m aware that y recommended tracks are all the singles from the album, but I just liked them the best. It’s coincidental. Until next time keep your stick on the ice.
