Few bands captured the Zeitgeist like
blink-182 did during their time as the irreverent kings of Warped Tour-era pop punk in the late '90s and early 2000s. Like a nasally, SoCal, three-headed hydra, the band, featuring singer/guitarist
Tom DeLonge, singer/bassist
Mark Hoppus, and drummer
Travis Barker, broke boundaries, gatecrashing MTV's TRL with their snotty, tongue-in-cheek music videos and anthems about falling in love at rock shows, making prank calls, and generally being stupid and having fun. Of course, there were darker times ahead, with
DeLonge quitting the band and then returning and quitting again.
Barker survived a 2008 plane crash that left him with multiple injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Finally, in 2021,
Hoppus successfully underwent chemotherapy to treat a rare form of lymphoma, a diagnosis that ultimately brought the trio back together, looking to heal old wounds and rekindle lost friendships.
It's that feeling of gripping onto the past right before it slips away that the reunited
blink-182 capture on their ninth studio album (or tenth, depending on if you count their initial demo), 2023's
One More Time.... Produced by
Barker, the album is their first to feature
DeLonge since 2011's
Neighborhoods. While the albums the group made with
Alkaline Trio's
Matt Skiba (2016's
California and 2019's
Nine) were solidly crafted, they always felt like something was missing. That something was
DeLonge's goofy sincerity and hyper-resonant croon, two key elements of the group's classic sound, along with their crisp guitar, bass, and drum riffs that are front and center throughout all of
One More Time.... Cuts like "Dance with Me," "Bad News," and "Fell in Love" are classic
blink-anthems that wouldn't sound out of place on
Enema of the State or
Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. Yet, there are wounds here, and the band dig deep into them, working through the mess of bad breakup on "More Than You Know" and revealing the stark truth about taking someone's presence in your life for granted on "You Don't Know What You've Got," the latter of which finds their voices intertwined in a throaty harmony. There's certainly the sense that
blink-182 are working through the pain of the past two decades on
One More Time..., including the death of close friends, divorces, and their own interpersonal drama. It's a vibe of carpe diem that they explicitly underline on the title track, singing "I know that next time ain't always gonna happen/I gotta say, 'I love you' while we're here."
One More Time... plays like a love letter, both to fans who stuck with them and to each other -- a letter that doesn't so much ask for forgiveness as offer it willingly, passionately, and without conditions. ~ Matt Collar
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