10 Classic Rock Songs That Were Likely Inspired From Other Songs

Towards the mid '00s, the pop punk formula was starting to turn a corner just a little bit. In the wake of more ambitious albums like American Idiot, bands were either doubling down on the more juvenile songwriting of growing into something much more interesting going forward. For all of their fun in the sun rock and roll, Sum 41 always had a heavy metal edge, and Chuck took that kind of music to the nth degree.

Going through every single one of the songs on this album, you can hear the band getting more in tune with the sounds of classic heavy metal, almost like the joke songs like Pain for Pleasure weren't actually a joke after all. Although there was a finer attention to detail with lyrics this time around, it's clear that the Bitter End is supposed to be a blatant Metallica pastiche, as the band take riffs that feel like James Hetfield's leftovers and cram them into their own original piece.

For any fairweather Metallica fan, you can still pick up hints of songs like Master of Puppets and even the solo breaks of Kirk Hammett in some of the leadwork, down to the chorus hook having the same vocal inflection as what happened on Battery. If you think about it though, Metallica were already going through one of the rougher patches of their career making St. Anger, so these Canadian rockers were going to have to do until they got back on track.