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Blink-182 is best known for its energetic and irreverent hits like “What’s My Age Again,” “All The Small Things,” and “I Miss You.” The band’s music has resonated with a generation of fans, and their influence on the pop-punk and alternative scenes is undeniable! Their newest album, One More Time…, dropped on October 20. Here’s my take on it.

October has turned out to be my favorite month of 2023: a revival of my favorite TV show debuted on the twelfth, new studio albums from two of my favorite bands came out on the twentieth, and a fresh installment of my favorite video game series dropped out the same day. Indulge me, if you would: I’m reviewing them over the next few days. Read the rest of them here.

It’s hard to believe that blink-182 is thirty years old! The band started in the early 1990s when snotty skateboard brat Tom Delonge joined forces with Mark Hoppus, his equally sophomoric best friend. Bonding over their mutual love of punk music and potty humor, the band reached stratospheric heights after superstar drummer Travis Barker joined in 1998. 

Blink ended the 1990s with consecutive blockbusters, Dude Ranch, Enema of the State, and Take Off Your Pants And Jacket. All went platinum, but new music has been spotty since the release of Blink-182 in 2003. These days, most know DeLonge for his involvement in UFO research, Barker for his marriage to Kourtney Kardashian, and Hoppus for, well, being the co-lead singer and bassist of blink-182. 

One More Time… is the signature lineup’s first full album of originals since Neighborhoods was released half-baked in 2011. Right out of the gate, “Anthem, Part 3” scratches my nostalgic itch by completing a trilogy that started on Enema and continued through TOYPAJ. Blink sure knows how to write an opening tune.

“Dance With Me” is a flat-out banger with a killer guitar riff that continues the one-two punch. It’s a profane, raunchy update of 2001’s “First Date,” and it’s my favorite of One More Time’s seventeen tracks. “Fell in Love” is next. Unfortunately, the song’s interpolation of “Close To Me” by The Cure isn’t enough to save it from filler territory.

DeLonge and Barker originally wrote the fourth song, “Terrified,” for Box Car Racer, their early post-hardcore side project. It’s a hidden gem, one of the heaviest songs blink has ever recorded.

Things take a maudlin turn with the title track, an emo ballad describing the tragedies that led the band to reform. DeLonge quit the band twice, Barker almost died in a plane crash, and Hoppus nearly succumbed to stage 4 Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Those events were real, but the song is packed with fan service and pandering callbacks. “One More Time” makes it clear that an older, more savvy blink-182 has emerged from the wreckage of their past, perhaps despite themselves.

Fortunately, blink isn’t that much wiser: the rest of One More Time… features two of the band’s notorious filthy joke songs, the by-the-books reunion single “EDGING,” and a slew of tunes that don’t quite take off. 

Three of the best songs blink’s recorded in years are in there too. “More Than You Know” is more punk than pop, and the early eighties synths of “Blink Wave” should have made it a single. The album peaks with “Turpentine,” a triumphant summarization of the band’s journey with some good dick jokes, to boot. Unfortunately, there are three more songs to go before the album ends and I can go back to playing Enema or their self-titled album. I guess this is growing up. 

Although its peaks could have elevated One More Time… to the level of an instant classic if released on their own, the rest of the album gets dragged down by filler and Barker’s dense production. Overall, One More Time… is a respectable comeback for blink-182 that seems as much like a gift to its fans as it feels like a gift to themselves. I give it seven out of ten smiley-face logos.

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