Last Thursday night Sum 41 pulled out all the stops at The Factory. The band was in town on their global Tour of the Setting Sum farewell tour and to promote their eighth and final studio album Heaven :x: Hell. The two disc album’s first disc Heaven features a return to the pop-punk roots of the band’s early years and disk two Hell is a continuation of the band’s heavy metal direction in later years. The band pulled all the stops for this tour. Pyro, confetti, streamers, small fireworks, a lightshow that could rival many stadium shows, and even at one point a large inflatables skeleton.

First up for the night was American hip-hop duo Joey Valence & Brae, consisting of rappers Joseph Bertolino and Braedan Lugue. The duo reminded me a bit of the Beastie Boys. At one point in their set a fan held up a Nintendo DS to which one of the duo replied holly shit is that a DS (the duo’s seventh single “Punk Tactics” was released in 2022 and the music video for the song was entirely filmed on a Nintendo DS).

The Interrupters were up next. They are a band I have wanted to see live for a very long time but it seems every time they are in town something happens and either I cant make the show or the band has had to cancel. The band consists of front woman Aimee Interrupter (Aimee Allen), and the Bivona brothers, Kevin (guitar), Justin (bass), and Jesse (drums). The band kicked things off with the one two punch of “Take Back the Power” and ‘Title Holder‘ before a cover of Bob Marley’s ‘Judge Not’. The band engaged with the crowd several times over the course of their eleven song set from guitarist Kevin Bivona expressing his sincere gratitude to being on this tour with Sum 41 to Aimee fist bumping fans in the front row and taking the time to read out a fans hand written sign. Near the end of the set the band did a fun cover of ‘Bad Guy’ by Billie Eilish but with a ska punk twist. Nearing the end of the set Aimee asked the crowd if they do circle pits here and then asked for the crowd to form the biggest one of the night before jumping into ‘Gave You Everything‘ and closed out the night with ‘She’s Kerosene‘.

As the lights went down ‘T.N.T.’ by AC.DC came over the PA and a large black curtain stretched across the stage blocking the view of the stage setup. As soon as the curtain fell the crowd erupted and the band kicked into ‘Motivation‘ off of their 2001 debut album ‘All Killer No Filler’. The first song was not even over yet and the pyro started to kick in. Lead singer/guitarist Deryck Whibley told the crowd that it makes him smile seeing you guys singing songs that are 20 years old and that the band will be pulling out a lot of old songs throughout the night. During ‘Walking Disaster‘ Whibley asked to have the lights turned down and had the crowd pull out phones to light up the venue. A little later Whibley told the crowd let’s go back not all the way back but really far back. This was our first single and kicked into ‘Makes No Difference‘. During the song Whibley told the crowd that back then we were playing in small basement shows. He said he wanted to recreate that early 90s feel on this tour so had a second drum kit brought out and had the band mid song come down to the front of the stage and get really tight together to recreate that feel. After the song Whibley said you guys really like that old shit so here are a few songs off of ‘Does This Look Infected’ but really quick and then played a medley of the songs My Direction / No Brains / All Messed Up followed up by a drum solo by Frank Zummo. The band did two cover songs with ‘We Will Rock You‘ by Queen and the second was Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire‘ but sung in the style of Social Distortions version of the song. Whibley had a gold guitar brought out to him for the song and told the crowd it was old guitar originally owned by Social Distortion singer Mike Ness. The crowd erupted as soon as the intro rap What We’re All About from the song “Fat Lip“. The set ended with ‘Still Waiting‘. The encore consisted of ‘Best of Me’, ‘Waiting on a Twist of Fate’, and ‘In Too Deep‘. The band still has several dates left on this tour and I would recommend seeing them seeing as this will be your last chance.