Sum 41's Chuck was the culmination of a transition that began on their third album, 2002's Does This Look Infected? While about half of that album showed growth in the form of songs erring on the latter side of the pop/punk equation, the other half was still written for the radio and MTV commercials. The result was a disjointed effort, stuck somewhere between the band's past and its near future.
On Chuck, however, the band fully committed to the new style, managing to create a cohesive product that was at once its heaviest and lightest output. The intro didn't start with the words "Children of the beast embrace," and the band indulged its metal influence in the form of actual songs, rather than by pretending to be an '80s hair metal band. For a band that made its name on immaturity, even relative to many of its peers in the inherently immature genre that is pop/punk, Sum 41 was actually largely successful on its fourth album.
The album's default sound is a heavier-than-usual punk sound that retains a strong sense of melody, and it works quite well with Deryck Whibley's voice and the album's big production. On "No Reason," "Open Your Eyes," and album closer "88," the band really sounds at home, providing three of their strongest tracks to date. Though they occasionally sound like they're trying to too hard to be The Offspring, most of these songs hold up tremendously well to date.
It's the other songs on the album where it gets interesting. The rest of the tracklist is split between the band's hardest and softest songs to date. On the heavy side is single "We're All to Blame," which executed the loud/soft dynamic better than I had remembered. But the other songs in this style provide the most obvious missteps on the album, such as "Angels With Dirty Faces" and "The Bitter End."
On the other side of the dichotomy are the lighter, acoustic-based songs, all of which still sound pretty good after 10 years. "Some Say" still sounds a little too much like Oasis, but "Slipping Away" and "Pieces" are both quality tunes, despite the former's significant lyrical cringeworthiness. Lyrical complexity has never been one of the band's strengths, although the music is often strong enough to overcome this fault. (The only word longer than one syllable in the chorus of "No Reason" is, in fact, the word "reason.")
At the end of the day, Sum 41 was never going to write a groundbreaking album (and 2011's Screaming Bloody Murder showed they probably shouldn't try to), but Chuck was about as strong of an album as an early '00s mainstream pop/punk band could write while still experimenting and stepping outside of their comfort zone. And, to my surprise, I actually enjoyed it better now than when it originally came out. This was also their last album with Dave "Brownsound" Baksh, who left prior to 2007's too-poppy Underclass Hero. That album saw the band begin to fade into general obscurity, remembered only when nostalgia creeps up and tempts you to play "Fat Lip" on your friend's old iPod on a road trip. But, listening to Chuck again shows that maybe they should be remembered for just a little more than that.
