What’s the year again? Paramore seems bigger than ever. Weezer, Avril Lavigne, Fall Out Boy and Green Day are selling out stadiums worldwide. Pop punks favourite trio are back together, releasing One More Time – their 9th studio album and the first in over a decade with Tom DeLonge.
Reminiscent of ‘Take Off Your Pants And Jacket’, released in 2001, the album opens with the latest instalment of ‘Anthem.’ Rounding this off to a trilogy, ‘Anthem Part 3’ opens similarly to Part 2, the drums firing like machine gun warning shots before exploding into life. It’s an opening that will fill the elder emos everywhere with an instant shot of nostalgia and perch them at the edge of their seats, waiting for the song’s main body to kick in. When this happens, we find a more explosive Blink 182, sounding more prominent and accomplished than ever.
‘Dance With Me’ (a song the band has billed as a “love letter” to the Ramones) leads us further into the album. Sitting at the higher tempo synonymous with pop punk music, a tempo played in order to attack a subject, Blink lets the down strokes reign supreme and provide what is perhaps the most catchy hook on the album. On their recent tour, some of the loudest chanting by fans has come on this song, pelting out the chorus “Ole Ole Ole Ole / Yeah, We’re doing it all night long”. It’s a true testament to the bands’ song crafting ability that with such an extensive back catalogue, boasting of ‘All The Small Things’, ‘First Date’ and ‘I Miss You’, they are still able to create moments like this that can rival the classics that came before.
Another song paying tribute to an inspiration of the band is found on ‘Fell in Love’. The song opens with a familiar synthesizer riff, played by engineer Kevin Bivona, that interpolates The Cure’s 1985 single ‘Close to Me.’ The song is perkier than most on the album. Tom and Mark share the vocal duties here while strolling around this alterna-pop tune, visiting the early days of a relationship.
The album holds 17 tracks in total but lasts less than 45 minutes. Mainly produced by Travis Barker and recorded primarily in his studio, having this personal space and the ability to control the songs from the writing phase to final production has undoubtedly benefited the end product. From start to finish, fans will feel and hear the authenticity present. With many ‘comeback’ albums, bands can sometimes fall into a pit led by an army of producers and advisors with aspirations to make the album as mainstream as possible for airtime, but here we find an unfiltered, unindoctrinated and unapologetically authentic album from the band.
This is most noticeable on the title track – ‘One More Time’; we find a more openly honest, self-reflecting Blink 182, laying their feelings for one another to bare. The song visits the bands’ history, tackling Travis Barker’s plane crash and Mark Hoppus’ recent battle with cancer, ending up as an endearing love letter between the three. It’s not often you see punk bands direct the camera in on themselves, usually working as a vehicle to portray emotion outwards off the stage at the rest of the world. It’s this that made the song so surprising to hear when it was released some weeks ago and why it received such widespread praise in its wake, acting as the first single since 2004’s ‘Down’ to reach the top 30 in the ‘UK singles charts’.
It’s worth noting just how brilliant Travis Barker is on this album. Jumping to ‘Bad News’ provides the perfect example. The song begins with an isolated Mark Hoppus sitting with his acoustic guitar, luring us down a mellow path before what can only be described as an explosion on the drum kit. Described by Tom DeLonge on more than one occasion as the ‘X Factor of the band’, Travis Barker lifts the song away from the mellow acoustic tones and into an adrenaline-fuelled frenzy. The drums burst into life with relentless fills, thunderous rolls and remarkably controlled stutters, given the song’s tempo on offer.
The album is joyous and proves plenty remains in the tank. Listening to the album, it’s hard to believe that with a career as illustrious as theirs, this could be them now only reaching the peak of their powers. They sound bigger, better and more capable than ever without forgetting who they are and what Blink 182 means to their fans. The pop-punk roots remain as clear as day with fun-filled, catchy lyrics and punchy melodies in abundance while now adding a harder-hitting human element to make it sound all the more relatable and gut-wrenching when needed.
The production of the songs sounds better than ever, undoubtedly benefitting from Travis Barker fine-tuning his skills in this department over the years working with other artists. Most importantly, to Blink 182 fans, they sound more united than ever. Having faced their traumas and found their way back together, we can all settle in for what will prove to be a defining and long-lasting period in the band’s story.
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