THE FINAL TOUR: SUM 41 CELEBRATE THE END OF AN ERA WITH HIGH ENERGY CAREER SPANNING LIVE SHOW

LIVE REVIEW | Sum 41 – The Setting Of The Sum Final Tour | MANCHESTER Co-Op Live | 28/10/24

After nearly 30 years as a band, pop punk legends Sum 41 are calling it a day. Earlier this year, they released their final, double album, ‘Heaven :x: Hell’ and over the past couple of years, they’ve embarked on their final tour, The Setting Of The Sum.

For the third of their UK dates, they played Manchester’s relatively new Co-Op Live arena, and they absolutely owned the entire evening! Playing an eclectic set from across their entire career (with only penultimate album ‘Order In Decline’ not getting any representation) with plenty of classics and deep cuts, energetic frontman Deryck Whibley led the extremely responsive crowd through an almost two hour set, featuring pyrotechnics, confetti, balloons, streamers, a giant skeleton and plenty of hand waving and crowd back-and-forth’s.

Kicking off with the classic ‘Motivation’, they went straight into ‘The Hell Song’, launching confetti into the crowd. The first deep cut of the evening was ‘Screaming Bloody Murder’, which is apparently Sum 41’s most requested song to play live, and this led into a fantastic performance of ‘Underclass Hero’, which featured Whibley getting both sides of the crowd to participate in who was loudest and balloons throughout, with Whibley popping them at the end, the last one sending confetti everywhere!

An excellent rendition of ‘War’ followed, and this led into the classic ‘Rhythms’, which got the whole room bouncing again! Taking some time to lament the fact that this was the last tour and that ‘Heaven :x: Hell’ was Sum 41’s final album (que playful booing from the crowd), new songs ‘Landmines’ and Dopamine’ were then performed back to back.

Next up, Sum 41 blasted through three songs from what is widely considered to be their best album, 2004’s ‘Chuck’. ‘We’re All To Blame’ got the first circle pit of the night going and was then accompanied by ‘Some Say’ and ‘No Reason’.

After Whibley spent a little time talking about how he had recently recovered his oldest guitar (which he had with him on stage at the time) and plugging his new book, they slowed things down a little with ‘Walking Disaster’ and ‘With Me’ before getting fast again with the very old classic ‘Makes No Difference’. This was followed up by a medley from ‘Does This Look Infected? (‘My Direction/No Brains/All Messed Up’) and an absolutely epic drum solo from Frank Zummo!

Sum 41 have always worn their metal hearts on their sleeves and after a great performance of new song ‘Rise Up’ (featuring a typically face melting guitar solo from Dave Baksh) they played snippets of songs from some of their influences, including Deep Purple, Slayer and Metallica.

Rounding out the evening, the introspective ‘Pieces’ led into the eternal teen anthem ‘Fat Lip’, which absolutely raised the roof with the majority of the crowd pogoing along, and finishing with ‘Still Waiting’.

Following a short break, Sum 41 returned to the stage for three more songs, starting with another early classic, ‘Summer’, followed by new classic ‘Waiting On A Twist Of Fate’ (with another great solo from Baksh) and finishing incredibly strong with the pop punk gem that is ‘In Too Deep’.

A second encore also followed, consisting of the acoustic ‘So Long Goodbye’ and another very old song, ‘Machine Gun’ – alas, I missed these as had already left to avoid the crowds on the way out!

As with another punk band that have called it a day this year, NOFX, Sum 41 seem to be playing the best shows of their career, absolutely bringing their A game and giving it their all across a great live retrospective of their entire career. If you haven’t caught them live yet, I suggest you do soon – there isn’t much time left!

Sum 41 play their final shows in Toronto, Canada in early 2025.