Review Summary: Take away the over produced sound, shorten the album, and you have a great blink-182 record. Almost.........
Tom Delonge quit the band back in 2015, and most fans said they were done with blink from there on, even after they announced that Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio would be his replacement. When I first heard this news, I was curious (like everyone else) to see what he would bring to the table on the new record, California. Bored to Death was the first single released, and I liked it. It wasn’t amazing, but it sounded like a blink song, and that’s what I wanted to hear....
I’ll start with Matt since he’s the newest member in the band (other than John Feldmann, I’ll get to that later). I dig him. Cynical starts with a semi-dark bass riff with Mark singing “There’s a cynical feeling saying I should give up”, then once the intro ends, Travis does a drum fill, messes up, screams “F***”, then the songs kicks off with a bang, with Matt playing a driving guitar riff that has punk written all over it. He definitely brings his Alkaline influence, but not too much. He still knew that people wanted to hear Tom riffs, so he ripped off some of Tom’s old riffs and spiced them up a bit. Take She’s Out Of Her Mind for example. The intro/verse riff could have been straight of off EOTS or TOYPAJ, but once the chorus starts, Matt does his own thing and it works very well. He is definitely a great addition to the band and I’m glad he is doing well.
Mark and Travis do fine, but they never step outside of their comfort zone. Travis usually has drum parts in songs that always stick out and make you want to air drum in class while everyone stares at you like you are having a stroke. But on this record, other than the fill in Cynical, he doesn’t do anything special. Mark is Mark, average singing voice, average bass playing, nothing new. Also, there are some pretty great lyrics on this record, such as a Matt line “There’s a stranger staring at the ceiling. Rescuing a tiger from a tree”. But for the most part, all the lyrics are very typical.
Now we get to John Feldmann. Oh John……...why? Why did you have to bring your over polished, over produced sound to a blink record? I understand that you’ve worked with 5 Seconds of Summer and Sleeping With Sirens, even All Time Low, but that doesn’t mean to have to take what you learned from those sessions and throw them into blink’s new album. Too many “WOH OH OH OHHHH OHHH”s, too many hand claps, overbearing keyboards, it’s just unnecessary and takes away the true pop-punk sound of blink. Songs like Home Is Such A Lonely Place and Los Angeles are pretty much John Feldmann songs, not blink songs, and they aren’t even that good, if at all. Because of John, his influence has made the band come out with a record that was built for a mainstream audience, with no intention of pleasing the real blink fans. That’s just how I feel anyway. Very disappointed on what he did with the album.
Overall, this is an average blink-182 album. There are about 5 songs that I really enjoy and will go back to, but the rest is very forgettable. Hopefully they will chose a different producer next time that will take them back to the Dude Ranch/EOTS days and keep that raw pop-punk sound without adding too much. If you are a blink fan, then definitely check this out. But if you never were into them, then don’t bother. For us blink groupies though, let’s just pop in Dude Ranch, plug our nose, and sing along with Tom and forget about John.
Recommended Songs:
Cynical
Bored To Death
She’s Out Of Her Mind
Sober
San Diego
