OTTAWA - It's really too bad I had to review Sum 41 at the Ottawa Congress Centre the night after Green Day played the Corel Centre.

That's because during last night's 75-minute show in front of 1,500 fans, it was impossible to stop comparing the two. For example, when Sum's members first bounded out onto a nearly-darkened stage, it was oddly reminiscent of Green Day's Space Odyssey-esque entrance the night before.

Deryck Whibley, a natural, charismatic frontman, was Billie Joe Armstrong-esque in his non-stop antics: Conducting the crowd as if it were his own outrageous orchestra, at times hitting himself in the head as if he were a spastic child, endlessly spitting in between.

Then there were the never-ending F-bombs: Apparently that word is still big with the under-20 set. The group even pulled a further Green Day move, starting out their show with the first three tracks from one of their albums: The Hell Song, Over My Head (Better Off Dead) and My Direction from 2003's Does This Look Infected?

Enough Green Day. No matter when they played, this pop-punk group's show was still sort of mediocre to me, compared to their boffo Bluesfest turn two years ago. Maybe it's the venue. I couldn't help wondering why on earth Sum 41 would pop back to the auditorily challenged and personality-free Congress Centre, especially since they just played it in January. Anyway, the group tore into No Brains and dug back in the music vault -- relatively speaking, for they are no Green Day when it comes to age, either -- to play Machine Gun from Half Hour of Power. Whibley actually proclaimed Makes No Difference, from the same album, as being for "old school Sum 41 fans." Old school. Aren't they 20?

After they played new single Some Say from last year's Chuck, Whibley proclaimed, "now we got all the slow sh-- out of the way." Not true, though, because they turned in Pieces a short while later.

Early on, Whibley introduced a boisterous tune dedicated to "dumb blondes," which I thought was odd, because his fiancee Avril Lavigne is, er, rather blond these days. They proceeded to play an expletive-laden tune called Anna Nicole Smith is a Dumb F----- -- actually, I already know my editors won't let me put that word in the paper. Sorry about the incomplete song title.

Still, they managed a fun night for their fans, who nearly wore out their forefingers and pinkies proving it.

There was crowd surfing, lots of fun Sum hits and enough bass -- nice work, Jay McCaslin -- and thrash to make sure no one could hear their parents talking on the way home.

Just the way Sum 41 would like it.

SUN RATING: 3 out of 5