Music
Review
Sum 41 at OVO Wembley Arena, 31/10/24
The pop-punk and metal crossover kings celebrate three decades of riffs, hits and singalongs at their final London show
“It’s so heartwarming to hear your boos!” frontman Deryck Whibley grins, relishing the crowd’s response to his reminder that this is the last time Sum 41 will grace a London stage.
“It’s been 30 years of Sum 41; the world has had enough!”
From the second the Canadian pop-punk legends step onstage though; Wembley Arena has clearly made it their duty to prove that statement wrong.
Unleashing confetti and pyro in abundance just minutes after their arrival, the insatiable pop-punk grit of ‘Motivation’ and the angsty snarl of 2002 track ‘The Hell Song’ kickstart the evening. Elsewhere in the set, triumphantly defiant ‘Rise Up’ and anthemic single ‘Landmines’ – both cuts from the band’s 2024 final double album ‘Heaven :x: Hell’ – spark surprisingly explosive reactions, before juggernauts ‘Fat Lip’ and ‘Still Waiting’ get the biggest responses of the evening.
The floor swiftly descending into a swarm of flailing limbs and crowd-surfing bodies, drummer Frank Zummo serves up nail-biting solos as guitarists Dave ‘Brownsound’ Baksh and Tom ‘Brown Tom’ Thacker rattle through riff after riff. Showcasing their skills with quickfire renditions of heavy metal classics midway through the show – Baksh nailing the iconic solo of Metallica’s ‘Master Of Puppets’ – every musician on stage has the crowd completely entranced.
Whibley frequently referring to everyone gathered before him as his “family”, no matter which chapter of their career the five-piece are celebrating, an undeniable sense of community buzzes through the room. Each request to jump, raise hands, and instigate circle pits met with rampant enthusiasm from fans old and new, even the night’s softest cuts feel monumental, the likes of ‘Pieces’ and ‘Best Of Me’ sparking tear-jerking mass singalongs.
Returning to the stage for the raucous one-two punch of early single ‘Summer’ and generation spanning mega-hit ‘In Too Deep’ before a second encore brings the live debut of 2004 album closer ‘Noots’, gratitude radiates from the Canadians as they bid a final goodbye to the capital. A victory lap of epic proportions, after three decades of riffs, singalongs and insatiable hooks, Sum 41 will forever stand proudly at the top of the modern rock podium.
