Mar 07, 2016
In an interview with PunkVideosRock during his ninth annual music and tattoo festival Musink (4-6 March), Travis Barker revealed that Blink-182 are almost ready to release a new album. It's set to be their first without founding member, Tom DeLonge.
“The album’s done, I’ll be honest with everybody,” Barker said in the interview. “It’s just a matter of picking what 12 to 14 songs are going to be on the album. I think we wrote 26 or 27? So everyone right now is really pushing for their favorites.”
Blink-182 formed in 1992, and went on an indefinite hiatus in 2005 after garning ridiculous popularity and becoming behemoths of the pop-punk genre. A 2009 return saw the band release the album Neighborhoods and the E.P Dogs Eating Dogs. However, DeLonge was seemingly fired from the band last year due to an issue with commiting time to record with Blink-182.
Cue Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio stepping in as replacement. When asked about Skiba, Barker was enthused about actually putting in the studio hours together with him and bassist Mark Hoppus, rather than sending audio files over the internet to one another.
“It was great to have someone who wants to be in the studio all the time with us. It has been amazing. I think the days of making great records - at least with Blink - the proof has been shown that it’s great when we’re all in the studio together.”
Barker also recently took a dig at his former band-mate during an interview with YouTuber Mr Wavvy, saying Delonge wanted "to record songs that basically sound like Coldplay."
Produced by John Feldman (Goldfinger), Blink-182's new album is slated for a summer release, but an exact date is yet to be announced.
Watch Barker's interviews with PunkVideosRock and Mr Wavvy below.
”image: Kerrang.com