Whilst the government health warnings are cute enough, the flagrant brandishing of negative quotes on the press sheet may be ill-advised: “I’m just glad I lived long enough to hear the shittiest band ever”, snarls Noel Gallagher of Oasis. “Another boy band with tattoos. Fuck ‘em.” offers an equally unrepentent Damon Albarn. The sad truth is, this would have been a rib-tickling concession of sorts by the band had it not been for the fact these sound bites are so spot on. Rather than underlining the brash, young indifference of these incorrigible hoodlums to the received wisdom of their po-faced elders, the quotes only serve to underline how terrible they really are. So if for two or three minutes you were uncertain: now you can proceed with confidence and say that Sum 41 really are one of the shittiest band ever and that it’s not just your imagination.
Admittedly they’ve come a long way since Motley Crue and the Beastie Boys lifted licks of their mega-hit, All Killer No Filler, and yes it’s certainly less bubblegum this time around, but the spiky-haired insolence of this pantomime punk quartet from Canada is wearing thin.
Beefier, grittier and more snarling than it’s predecessor — and stealing the full metal jacket of hard rock veterans like Iron Maiden and (ah hem) Def Leppard — the album is a typically youthful look at social injustice and ideological decay, and although we’re not talking anything as hi-falutin as Baudelaire or Proust, it’s significant nonetheless, if only because it is so tragically undermined by the comic-book ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ approach they adopt to tackle the issue: how do we inform folks they are being transformed into zombies? We all get kitted up in full zombie-gear for the cover art. It’s about as subtle as a kick up the arse. Oddly enough though, the kitsch, 50s retro cover art is perhaps the most inspired thing about the album. The advice from the label should have been, ‘keep the Zombies fellas, and ditch the politics’.
But enough of the slights and enough of the bile: ‘Does This Look Infected?’ does everything it says on the tin: it’s crass, it’s vile, it’s lurid and on the whole it’s a riotous and enjoyable punk-pop romp.
They may only be playing at being Ozzy — but that’s probably a whole lot more sensible than actually being Ozzy.