After surviving breakups, deadly plane crashes, and cancer battles, Blink-182 — Travis Barker, Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge — is back with a new album.
The band announced One More Time… on Monday, September 18, with a four-minute trailer featuring clips of their upcoming Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe interspersed with footage of the past decade — including the 2008 plane crash that nearly killed Barker, 47, while taking the lives of three other passengers. The traumatic experience had a profound effect on the making of this new project.
“On the album, [the title track] ‘One More Time’ is kind of written about why does it take these catastrophes — like me being in a plane crash or Mark being sick — for our band to get back together?” Barker tells Lowe. DeLonge, 47, stepped away from the group in 2015, before returning to the lineup in 2022. Hoppus, 51, revealed he was undergoing chemo for large B-cell lymphoma in 2021, and said he was cancer-free later that year.
The album, out on October 20 via Columbia Records, celebrates how the core friendship between these three has survived all this tragedy and heartbreak. “I always knew that the brotherhood wouldn’t ever deteriorate or wouldn’t be there,” said Barker. “I really feel like blink is us three, and the soon as we accept that, and don’t settle for anything less than that, I think that’s just the future.”
In June, Barker reflected on the 15th anniversary of the deadly crash that killed his security guard, Charles Monroe Still, Jr., and his friend and assistant, Chris Baker. Barker shared a photo of Baker’s grave marker on his Instagram Story, and his pregnant wife, Kourtney Kardashian, posted a similar observance to her story.
Barker and Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein were the only survivors of the South Carolina crash. Sadly, Goldstein died less than a year after the calamity from a drug overdose.
Despite all the tragedy, the Mark, Tom and Travis show reunited in 2022, announced a comeback single, and a world tour. The group also replaced Frank Ocean as a headliner for Weekend 2 of Coachella 2023, after the rapper pulled out.
One More Time… (pre-save/pre-order here) is the first album to feature Barker, Hoppus, and DeLonge since 2011’s Neighborhoods. After DeLonge’s exit, Barker and Hoppus continued the group with Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba, releasing California in 2016 and Nine in 2019. The album “features 17 new songs that capture the band at the top of their game, layering in themes of tragedy, triumph and most importantly, brotherhood,” according to a press release.
The album will be available digitally and physically on CD. For vinyl collectors, One More Time... will be available on standard black vinyl and multiple limited-edition variants, including a “purple ooze D2C exclusive LP, red and clear marble colored D2C exclusive LP and egg splatter colored D2C exclusive LP.” Additional versions will include a “coke-bottle clear colored indie exclusive LP,” an opaque white colored Amazon exclusive variant and an electric smoke-colored Spotify Fans First exclusive LP.
