Blink-182’s Second Behind the Scenes Drop

travis is such a chill dude. can't wait for friday.

 

Every time I've met him, he's been a nice guy, cool interview and can't wait for the record.

 

seems general concensus over at the blink 182 reddit is that this is one of their worst. Ive listened to the leak, (my vinyl already came in the mail but i dont have a record player) and its painfully average or shallow. It feels like they wrote each song in one sitting, with one take. Need a verse here, fill it with woooaah ooohs, or nanananananana. (My favorite song Sober has nanananas, but theyre done right) I guess really a lot of people were expecting a return to form, but we got Five Seconds of Summer sounding songs, and Simple Plan type songs. (FELDMAN PRJOECTS) Not to diss the guy, But those sounds dont work good with Blink, Im a bit bummed out, great we got new blink music, but I think this will make a lot of the Tom deniers turn around and beg for him back.

 

Lesson here: never listen to Reddit.

 

My first 3 listens I felt the exact same way that you do. I Felt Matt Skiba brought a better than expected dynamic and John Feldmann was the reason for it sounding like pop rock commericalness. I was personally looking for a more upbeat/punky version of +44. I was disappointed at first. But I figured out that I'm looking at the entire project the wrong way. They didnt want to make that album. They wanted a super feel good energetic summer album. It is not Mark's finest lyrical hour for the most part, but it doesn't matter when the goal is feel good anthems (with a hint of chart success). Maybe that's why they went with Feldmann as producer. I think he influenced it more than they may have initially planned, but it kind of works.

Also, I think the 'nananas' en 'woahs' were done so much intentionally. The vocals had to serve as another instrument. Skiba has a rhythm guitar style of playing, unlike Tom's semi picking/chord style (there's a fancy word for it that I don't know). So without adding a ton of synths or additional guitars, they went with vocal instrumentation. Also it adds to the feel good factor. I miss the Tom Blink version, but he is in no shape or form good for Blink anymore. This is a pretty good alternative.

 

Reddit is split 50/50 and it's Pro-Tom vs. Anti-tom. This will not change anyone's mind about Blink either way. This entire post is inaccurate.

 

But Reddit is the future and the end all be all!

 

God help us all. Haha.

 

Might have to check out this leak. I personally dug Bored and Rabbit Hole but very much hated No Future so I'm a little worried.

 

Bored was pretty good and even had great moments.

Songs released since then have gotten progressively worse. And I'm not a Skiba hater... My fav part of No Future is his verse.


I'm not a huge fan of Feldmann projects the past few years... But I realize I must be in the minority considering I didn't totally hate Neighborhoods.

 

Bored to Death and Left Alone are my favourites. I wish Brohemian Rhapsody wasn't wasted as a joke song as that intro is great. Skiba sounds better than Tom ever does but I don't like the direction for this album. I know I said it before, but honestly the continuous "na na na" and "whoa whoa" on almost every song annoys me. People's explanations for Skiba's style of playing against Tom's makes sense for the justification of it but I still can't help but roll my eyes at it.

I'm echoing previous criticisms here but songs like Home is Such a lonely Place, California, Sober, and more of these songs could easily be on 5sos records. Which is fine but I'd expect more from Blink. Personally, I don't think Feldmann was the right choice for Blink.

Nothing truly stands out as a huge potential hit. Bored to Death is the catchiest and She's Out of her Mind will do alright as a single. Still need time to fairly formulate an opinion on all songs, but for me, it's their worst album.

 

This has nothing to do with all those pain killers he was taking for several years, I'm sure.

 

Uhh, yeah it probably doesnt have anything to do with all those pain killers he was taking for several years.

 

Massively let down so far. Had such high hopes for this record. I got maybe 4-5 songs I'll listen to again.

 

Yeah, I mean Mark has explicitly stated that's basically what they did lol. He said feldman was all about just spitting a song out and rolling with it....not overthinking the lyrics or anything....so they went along with that.


Personal thoughts on it; yeah...the album's bad. This is the first thing they've done that I'd call a regression. This doesn't sound like inspired musicians trying to express something.....it sounds like some people cashing in on a name with lazy songwriting. imo.

 

Feldman has been bad for awhile now, I really dont understand why people keep going to him. I cant stand his "style". Unless you're just trying to make some soulless sounding, radio rock, for pre-teens...then by all means, go for it.

 

Listened to it a few more times today. Tracks #9-#13 are decent enough but even if you add "Bored to Death", that's still only 6 tracks out of 16. Not a good percentage.

 

For baseball that's amazing!

 

Totally doesn't. No way. Not. At. All.