ARTIST: BLINK-182
ALBUM: ONE MORE TIME . . .
LABEL: COLUMBIA RECORDS
YEAR RELEASED: 2023
FORMATS: LP, 33 1/3 RPM, BLACK VINYL and DIGITAL MP3
Side 1
1 - Anthem Part 3
2 - Dance With Me
3 - Fell in Love
4 - Terrified
5 - One More Time
6 - More Than You Know
7 - Turn This Off!
8 - When We Were Young 9 - Edging Side 2 10 - You Don’t Know What You’ve Got 11 - Blink Wave 12 - Bad News 13 - Hurt (Interlude) 14 - Turpentine 15 - Fuck Face 16 - Other Side 17 - Childhood (Appears as track 19 on digital version)
Digital Only Tracks (Appear as tracks 17 - 18 on digital version) Cut Me Off See You
Blink-182 return with their ninth studio album One More Time . . . and it reunites the classic lineup of Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis Barker.
As a long time Blink-182 I had high expextations on what they would deliver with this release and I received some of it. I honestly wab hoping we would get a lot 1990's style Blink-182 and less of the modern grown-ups style Blink-182 and they gave us a bit of both and I can't complain about that.
The album comes in quite a few colors of vinyl but I decided to purchase the black version from Amazon.com and with it they gave me the digital version for free which includes two extra songs "Cut Me Off" and "See You" that appear at the end of the album before the final track "Childhood."
The packaging on this album is simple but nice and I actuall like it a lot. The cover is a hot pink with just the logo (my photo's do not do the color justice) with a gatefold interior, printed inner sleeves, and an extra liner notes sheet that matches the inner sleeve. The odd thing about the packaging is that the record has no mention of the album name on it at all. The digital cover version is also different as it shows three black and white portraits of the band members and leaves out the smiley face and arrows logo. The CD is even more different as the pink is replaced with blue and has the album title on the cover.
Overall the album is a really good pop-punk album but my one complaint is that in parts the drums sound odd to me like they are in front of everything else which would make sense since Travis Barker produced the album. This may not bother anyone else but I prefer hearing the guitars in front of the drums. This also may be a result of the headphones I've been listening to this on lately.
Is this Blink-182's best album? No it isn't but it is a nice bridge betwwen early (1995-2001) and late Blink-182 (2005-Present) which would put it at number 5 of their nine studio albums. Does it have any huge sounding catchy hits on it? No, not really but it does have some solid songs that fans of the band should enjoy.
Anthem Part 3 starts out the album with that oldschool Blink-182 sound we all remember and takes off into a fast paced rocker.
The sophomoric humor returns at the beginning of Dance With Me and this one is a sing along Blink song that I can definitley see as a crowd favorite if they played it live. Fast paced, repetitive chorus, go, go, go!
Fell in Love sounds more like their modern era. This one is a bit up and down for me I like the chorus "Do You Remember The Time When We First Met? . . . " part but like the rest a bit less. This one was released as a single so maybe it'll grow on me.
The stand out song on the album is the title track "One More Time" this song is grown up and mature Blink-182 at it's best and is one of the best songs they ever recorded. If you love this band this mostly acoustic song will pull at your heartstrings and make you look at your own personal relationships. From the very first line "Strangers, from strangers into brothers, From brothers into strangers once again . . ." I knew they were telling us and themselves they messed up breaking the band apart and it was an apology to each other as well as us the fans. The song confronts the tragic events the band has faced head on in the lyrics, Mark Hopus battleing cancer and Travis Barker's near death experience in a plane crash, the lyrics hit me pretty hard as I related it to my own life "Older, but nothing's any different, Right now feels the same, I wonder why, I wish they told us, it shouldn't take a sickness, Or airplanes falling out the sky, Do I have to die to hear you miss me? Do I have to die to hear you say goodbye?, I don't wanna act like there's tomorrow, I don't wanna wait to do this one more time . . . " This song is definitely a classic.
More Than You Know is a bit heavier emo sounding track that might get the bodies moving in your living room mosh pits.
The song that I see as a super radio friendly hit that probably won't be because of the F-Bomb is When We Were Young, A great pop-punk banger with a big sounding chorus.
Edging was the first single released on this album and was what made me excited that we might be getting old-school Blink-182.
You Don't Know What You Got is one that I like the lyrics but the music isn't doing it for me. It sounds familiar yet something is off about it.
Blink-182 takes a twenty-seven second stab at hardcore punk on a track called "Fuck Face" and well it kind of works. As out of place as it seems it belongs right here.
The bonus tracks must have been left off for a reason but I'm not sure what the reasoning is on that, the LP would probably be too long but they are left out of the CD as well. Cut Me Off and See You don't really need to be on the album but they also fit in with the rest (I'd probably not pay extra for them digitally though).
The final track Childhood is kind of mellow but big and loud at the same time, it has some strange weird parts that don't sound like the same band, but closes the album with a sense of finality. I hope this isn't the last we here from Blink-182.
Overall this is a good mid-range Blink-182 album with a few new classics. Go get it.
-Kevin P. Johnson
Copyright ©2023 Kevin P. Johnson
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