Blink-182 have released their seventh studio album titled ‘California’ as of July 1, 2016 through BMG featuring members Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker and Matt Skiba.
If the new Blink-182 album sounds different to you – that’s no mistake sir. Tom DeLonge, who used to share vocals with Mark Hoppus and play guitar, is no longer in the band. Apparently he continued to stall, wasn’t enthusiastic about recording new material while the other guys were and recently revealed that he’s busy focusing on UFO’s and government conspiracies. So Tom is officially batshit crazy – not even for just leaving Blink-182 – but just in general. Crazy.
Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio is filling that void and doing a brilliant job. His style isn’t as unique as Tom’s vocally and I will admit — I kind of miss DeLonge a little even as good as ‘California’ is. I’m not used to seeing my favorite 90’s bands change so much – part of me wants them to sound exactly the same, but I realize that’s completely stupid because Matt’s addition to Blink-182 has re-energized the band. The music sounds like oldschool Blink and at the same time they’ve evolved in the process, which is the perfect combination of success. ‘California’ is a pop punk kick in the teeth which moves fast and hard but always remains fun. This could very well be the record of the summer.
John Feldmann, who is the frontman for Goldfinger, also produced ‘California’ and I think he really is another integral reason for the album’s success – making the guys record over 50 songs. Eventually they narrowed it down to 16, including a couple joke tracks which work so damn good I’m happy they made the cut even if they clock in at less than a minute each.
‘Kings of The Weekend’ has a solid shot at being my go-to summer party track (let’s not kid yourself, I don’t party, but I will be listening to this one in the car every Friday). The guitar hook gets so heavy on that one… ‘She’s Out of Her Mind’ has my favorite chorus on the record too and takes me back to the days when Blink-182 was all over Much Music in high rotation, running down the streets naked for some reason.
It’s an anomaly when a band that is so associated with a certain time period manages to reinvent themselves AND still stay true to their roots at the same time AND completely replace someone who we all thought was an essential member AND still kill it. ‘California’ is damn good and I’m happy that they were able to pull this seemingly impossible task off at all, let alone put out their best record in YEARS.
Rating: [star rating=”4.5″]