“A lot of this was by accident,” says Deryck Whibley of the genesis of Sum 41’s eighth record, Heaven :x: Hell. Early in lockdown, the Canadian band’s lynchpin was inundated with calls from managers and artists requesting his services penning pop-punk bangers. Deryck was a little worried – it had been several years since he’d dipped his toe in that particular pool, after all – but he decided to take the plunge anyway. Back then, Deryck and his wife Ariana had just welcomed their first child into the world, a boy named Lyndon Igby. “The only thing he would mellow out to was punk rock music,” explains Deryck, who’d regularly take his son out in the car, driving around the uncharacteristically quiet streets of Los Angeles, blasting the songs that soundtracked his high school ...
