What: Sum 41 with PUP and Gob
Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre
When: Friday, Jan. 10, 2025
Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)
Sum 41 said their final goodbye to Victoria on Friday night, the first stop on the band’s farewell tour of sa国际传媒 after nearly 30 years of pop-punk servitude.
It was a big, noisy exit, with nearly two hours of thrashing punk and arena rock antics, from pyrotechnics and confetti cannons to blasts of artificial smoke. Never ones for subtlety, the Toronto group delivered a set that was equal to blunt force trauma, with a few notes of compelling emotion mixed into the evening.
For an outfit marking its departure, they couldn’t have been happier with the results: About 6,000 fans in a sold-out Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre heard the band tear through a career-spanning set of more than 25 songs.
Well played, all involved.
The band, led by founders Deryck Whibley (vocals, guitar), Cone McCaslin (bass) and Dave Baksh (guitar), was in great spirits, despite the underlying melancholy for longtime fans of the In Too Deep hitmakers.
The Grammy-nominated group is enjoying a resurgence in popularity after some lean years in the 2010s, which made the timing of their amicable departure (set for March, following their performance at the Juno Awards in Vancouver) ill-fitting. On Friday, the band didn’t perform like it was on its way out, however.
In fact, one of the best songs of the night was their latest single, Landmines. If the band asked for a do-over, and cancelled their early retirement, it would be understandable.
Indeed, it has been quite the run for Sum 41, whose first hit, the rap-rock staple Fat Lip, arrived when the members — now mostly in their mid-40s — - were brash 20-year-olds. The song still holds up, and was a highlight Friday, but their more recent work carried more artistic weight on this night.
The two opening acts, Vancouver’s Gob and Toronto’s PUP, were solid, yet for different reasons. The audience seemed more familiar with Gob, given their presence on rock radio and longstanding relationship with Victoria, but PUP had a far better stage presence. The band came across like Vampire Weekend on steroids, and had chutzpah aplenty.
The audience was somewhat disengaged during PUP’s set. But for a quartet playing the first date of its inaugural arena tour across sa国际传媒, their tenacity was impressive. And welcome.
Sun 41 has played its share of arena shows, though not necessarily in Victoria (this was the band’s first appearance here since 2007). During their career, their popularity has surged and recessed, and members have come and gone.
But despite the turmoil, they eventually found a sweet spot, as evidenced by career record sales of more than 15 million copies.
“We said we came here to get crazy,” Whibley, who was hyper-animated all night, shouted during The Hell Song.
“Show me what you got.”
The crowd answered the call with a pretty impressive mosh pit, which grew in intensity as the night went on.
This wasn’t the version of Sum 41 that played the Blanshard Street arena two decades ago. This was a sinewy, road-tested group, that got better with age.
They will be missed.
