Blink-182 is dead. Again. Once again because of problems with founding guitarist, Tom Delonge. The last time it was to be in side project Angels & Airwaves, which no one remembers. Before that it was Box Car Racer, which no one remembers. The news comes from a press release first posted on Radio.com stating that Tom’s departure is indefinite. Mark Hoppus, the founding bassist, said that “A week before we were scheduled to go in to the studio we got an email from his manager explaining that he didn’t want to participate in any Blink-182 projects indefinitely, but would rather work on his other non-musical endeavors.” So at least there’s no side projects to worry about.
Mark and Travis Barker have decided to move forward with tour dates, and Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba filling in for Tom, and hopefully they continue to make music (it worked without Scott Raynor when he left the band to go to college, so why couldn’t it work without Tom?). Mark has a tried and true ability to write pop-punk music like no one except maybe Billie Joe, and Travis is quite frankly one of the best drummers of the last 20 years.
As a fan, it was hard not to see this coming. When Tom switched over to Gibson guitars from Fender, it was truly the beginning of the end.
Here it is, the song you have to try really hard to hate:
Article by: Christopher Gilson
