It’s hard to believe that it was way back in 1993 when blink-182 released their debut album, CHESHIRE CAT. And two years since the band’s last studio album, although there have been individual side projects (Boxcar Racer, Transplants), and the new album took almost a year to complete. Mark Hoppus (vocals, bass) observed, “On this album, we really made a conscious decision to go in with the attitude that we are not making our next record, we’re making our first record. So we went in and didn’t think about what people expect from blink-182. If we had an idea, we wouldn’t second-guess, ‘does that sound like blink-182?‘.” For the new album, and new vision, the band worked with long-time collaborator Jerry Finn, whom Hoppus regards as ‘the fourth member of blink.’ Also making an appearance on the new album is Robert Smith (The Cure), Ken Andrews (Failure, Year Of The Rabbit). The legendary Andy Wallace, Jerry Finn, Tom Lord-Alge and Ryan Hewitt were all involved in mixing duties.

The first single off the album, Feeling This opens the album in grand, and rather sexy style. Travis Barker on drums gives the first of several devastating album performances, while the guitar riffs are as strong, if not stronger than ever. Great melody, mouth-watering harmonies and deft lyrics complete a sure-fire hit (although it’s by no stretch of the imagination the best album track…).

Obvious repeats the dose with some magical bass riffs and an even stronger melody. And some lyrical gems like, “How can we fix this if we never have vision.” The album gets even better with one of the highlights of the album, I Miss You. It’s a less manic track and is infused with clever and very atmospheric instrumental passages, superb vocal, and a monster of a melody. It’s this song that for me signals the band’s rampant musical progress. Violence opens with sharp finger snaps, couple shakers, and in between the instrumental rushes and vocal choruses, words are spoken by Delonge and Hoppus. It’s very different, very good.

Then one of the most interesting and moving tracks on show here, Stockholm Syndrome, with its opening distant piano notes and spoken word vocal. The opening lyrics were extracted from letters written by Hoppus’ grandmother to his grandfather during World War 2. The song then takes on a much angrier tone with furious skin beats and crashing guitar riffs. Down is up next with its mesmerising “Down, down, down, down” chorus, and concluding keyboard notes. The Fallen Interlude is a superb instrumental interlude with yet another dramatic performance on drums, and superb manipulated vocals that see the song out. Wonderful. The second half of the album sustains the quality and momentum with several more standout tracks such as Asthmenia, the moving rock opus Always and stripped down, glacial and inventive magic of All Of This (a very major highlight with a superbly expressive Hoppus vocal performance). And of course there’s the epic and endless masterpiece I’m Lost Without You which is set to become a rock classic. I could go on but suffice to say that every one of the 16 tracks I would classify as special to very special - all killa, no filla…

This is some record! It’s full of invention, lyrical maturity, superb melodies, incredible instrumental performances and quite superb production. It is also a more serious album but without shedding that distinctive blink sound. Hoppus commented on this aspect of the album, “We don’t have any joke songs or anything like that on the record. Everything’s pretty straightforward. On the other albums, we’d have 12 songs and two of them would be joke songs. On this one we don’t have any.”

This an album that reveals more with each listen, and just gets better and better. I suspect it will also appeal to a much wider audience and provide maturing blink fans with something to be very smug about. Essential.

4.5/5