Review Summary: Blink. Mature.
4 of 23 thought this review was well written Mark Hoppus- Bass, Vocals
Tom Delonge- Guitar, Vocals,
Travis Barker- Drums
Blink-182, skate punks who love to sing to tweens and young adults the cool nature of dog sex and cumming in a sock. People, who have never heard of blink will read this and look at the rating and be completely dumbfounded. And they’ll take a listen to the masterful pop-punk legends and totally and completely understand.
First things first, this is dad blink, not blink who wanted to drink a beer and jack-off. They’re serious now, break ups, parental divorce, suicide, sadness. Its dark, but it still holds on to uplifting riffage and teenage rock, as well introducing some of the music your ‘hip’ mom listened to in middle school (I.E the cure).
Starting off with Feeling This, a song about sex, and the first single off the album, showing the ‘pleasure’ side of gettin’ it in with the versus, and the romantic, sensual part with the chorus’s, it does a really good job of showing how they feel about sex. This song is almost like a good bye to old blink, more old school pop-punk then the rest of the album. It’s a very good welcome track, making sure old blink fans don’t instantly say “bleh’ and turn it off. The next track Obvious is dark, and has very adult emotion orientated lyrics, jealousy (“I know you ***ed him again”) and self realization (“how can we fix this we never have vision”) make sure this track stays with you for a long time. The third track, I Miss You, which everybody and there sister has heard knows this is blink’s epic/masterpiece. Its slow, it jams, its heartfelt, it made sure every girl on the brink of getting there period came every time the video appeared during MTV’s one hour of videos at 5 A.M. Afterwards plays ‘Violence’ which has verses that would not seem out of place if it appeared on a devil worship scene during a movie, with a powerful chorus and weird outro, is defiantly one of the best tracks on the record. By now if you’d have listened to blink before, then you’ve notice that marks vocals are being completely underutilized, and tom has taken it upon him self to carry the album, which isn’t a bad thing, since toms voice had so much emotion through out the entire album, but to put it bluntly, if the vocals had been even, this would have been even better, which is hard to even imagine.
Stockholm syndrome and down, both standout tracks (though every almost every song is a standout track) plays next and only furthers this albums epicness. Then an interlude. “Hey bro I got the new blink-182 album, and there’s a song with no words, wtf huh”. Yeah this track is Travis Barker owning, point blank. Go, which is the fastest song on the album, is about divorce, not a new subject for blink. Easy Target = fast, short and epic with a slurred guitar outro. Always, the last single to be released, has very 80’s feel with its synth outro. Asthenia has a big epic stadium rock feel to it, and has a very unique intro with a clip from NASA. Then All of This, which is helped by Robert Smith of *gasp* The Cure? Yup, his british/emo over-toned voice is fantastic. Here’s you letter (my personal favorite blink track of all time) is phenomenal, with awesome lyrics, an “enema” guitar riff, and the 2nd verse is damn impressive lyrically. The album comes to an end with the very long I’m Lost Without You, it’s only an average song, but it does its job to end the album.
This album was blink shedding there old worn out skin and re-growing what could have been the start of a music revolution (jk). But they broke up, did there own (very) average side projects, did their growing up and now there prepping for a new release. Let’s hope it’s as good as this.
Pros:
Experimental
Lyrical improvement is immense
Tom vocals are extremely emotional
Cons:
Mark sings way less then in past albums
Recommended tracks:
I Miss You
Violence
Stockholm Syndrome
Asthenia
All of This
Here’s Your Letter
