In Australia earlier this year for Soundwave and a series of headline sideshows, their first Down Under dates in nearly a decade, Blink-182 have revealed plans for a new studio album that will be released in “late spring/early summer” of next year.
The pop punk trio have yet to issue a follow-up full-length to their sixth and latest album, 2009’s comeback album Neighborhoods, but bassist mark Hoppus now says that the band have hopes to hit the studio in early 2014 to complete new material and issue a record not long after.
“We haven’t thought about any new songs yet,” Hoppus admits to Kerrang! in a recent interview, but revealed that they’d be getting cracking on new material once entering the studio. “It always happens when the three of us are together in a room,” the bassist says of their writing methods now that the band live in different cities.
“Tom lives in San Diego, Travis lives in Los Angeles and I live in London, so we don’t really talk all that much. But then when we get in a room together, it all falls into place and we start making jokes,” he adds. “That’s when we start writing songs and reconnecting with everything.”“When we get in a room together, it all falls into place and we start making jokes.”
The new studio album will be Blink-182’s first full length album as an independent band, after splitting from their label Interscope in 2011, but it in actual fact will be their second release since going it alone after releasing a Christmas-themed digital EP in December 2012 called Dogs Eating Dogs. “This EP is a hundred times better than Neighborhoods,” said drummer Travis Barker at the time, “because we’re all in a room together [writing].”
The tattooed drummer of course didn’t make it out to Australia for the band’s last visit, forced to pull out of Blink-182’s Soundwave slot and accompanying sidewaves due to his severe fear of flying, induced by his incredible 2008 escape from a burning plane that claimed the lives of everyone on board except Barker and DJ Adam Goldstein.
A catastrophic event that eventually led to the reformation of the punk group and the release of the pop punks’ sixth studio album, Neighbourhoods in 2011 and their first since their 2005 split.
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Drummer Brooks Wackerman, who hits the skins for Tenacious D and Bad Religion, joined Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge as a last minute replacement for their Australian Tour. The replacement did a serviceable job according to our Tone Deaf reviewer, who praised his “serious skill behind the kit,” while proclaiming of the show: “‘What’s my age again?’ isn’t a meaningless but catchy throwaway line, it’s a motto for the temporary escape that Blink-182 can offer in their live show.”
