As you'd expect from any band that would call its debut album No Pads, No Helmets...Just Balls, the self-titled release from Simple Plan is a fearless, without-a-net excursion into dynamic music-making, taking what we love best about Simple Plan - the unbridled energy, the ripping guitars, the hook-filled melodic sensibility - and incorporating a slew of inventive sonic approaches.

Reviews:

Good Charlotte took heat for blurring the lines between pop-punk and straight-up pop, but this Montreal quintet happily straddled genres to major commercial effect via 2002's No Pads, No Helmets' Just Balls. Scoring heavy crossover chart action with "Addicted" and "Perfect," Simple Plan infuriated elitists by not "paying dues," but proved to be potent hitmakers. This third go understandably gets production help from the architects behind Evanescence and Avril.