The long wait is almost over. Blink-182 finally announced the release date and track list for their eagerly anticipated reunion album on Monday morning (Sept. 18). The trio’s first new album with returning OG member singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge since 2011, ONE MORE TIME…, is due out on Oct. 20 via Columbia Records; the title track will drop at 10 a.m. ET on Thursday (Sept. 21).
The news was announced via a nearly four-minute video montage uploaded on Monday in which the group — which also includes bassist/singer Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker — discussed childhood trauma and chaos that birthed the band in a chat with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe; that full interview will be uploaded soon.
“Blink was always a way to force the happiness in the room,” says DeLonge in the clip, which chronicles the hurt feelings and press pile-on that accompanied the guitarist’s departure in 2015. “I definitely didn’t want to hold these guys back in any kind of way,” the band’s co-founder says emotionally in the Lowe interview, recalling a conversation with his wife in which he told her he might not ever play music again.
However, when Hoppus shared that he was battling the blood cancer diffuse large B-cell lymphoma — the bassist announced in April 2022 that he was cancer-free — DeLonge said the news made him think that playing music with his friends was “the only thing I want to do.”
The video preview features a sneak listen to three new songs, including the emotional title track ballad, which Barker says dives into the question of “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 was nearly killed in a Sept. 2008 plane crash that took the lives of four passengers and critically injured his friend Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein.
The song tackles those traumas head-on with the lines, “I wish they told us it should take a sickness/ Or airplanes falling out the sky.” Hoppus tells Lowe that the chemotherapy he underwent “wrecked” his vocal cords and resulted in him visiting a vocal coach to even get him to the point where the band could play Coachella earlier this year. “When it’s the three of us onstage I feel unstoppable, we f—ing crush,” Hoppus says.
The bassist also dives into the intense feelings he felt after his diagnosis and the struggle during treatment, with DeLonge saying once he heard his friend was sick “nothing matters, really,” and Barker adding that he always knew the trio’s “brotherhood wouldn’t ever deteriorate… or wouldn’t be there.” Other songs previewed in the video include the uplifting rocker “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got” and the blitzing “Anthem Part 3.”
According to a release announcing the project, ONE MORE TIME… was recorded during the band’s 2023 reunion tour, which kicked off with a surprise last-minute addition to the lineup for April’s Coachella Festival. Produced by Barker, it features 17 new songs that “capture the band at the top of their game, layering in themes of tragedy, triumph and most importantly, brotherhood.” To date they’ve previewed the collection with the single “Edging,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart in November, after topping the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart.
Hoppus promises that this is, without a doubt, “one of the best albums we’ve ever made.”
Check out the track list for ONE MORE TIME… and watch the trailer below.
“Anthem Part 3”
“Dance With Me”
“Fell in Love”
“Terrified”
“One More Time”
“More Than You Know”
“Turn This Off!”
“When We Were Young”
“Edging”
“You Don’t Know What You’ve Got”
“Blink Wave”
“Bad News”
“Hurt (Interlude)”
“Turpentine”
“Fuck Face”
“Other Side”
“Childhood”
