blink-182 Band • Page 1514

Lifeforms is definitely worth checking out. Their best album.

 

+1 on Lifeforms being their best by far. I still have a big nostalgia factor with WDNTW and I-Empire though. Happy that Interscope released more of that new WDNTW pressing and hoping to get I-Empire from that stupid IVC club next month. They've dropped the ball and outright cancelled my order multiple times, so not getting my hopes up for it.

 

Exactly how I feel. I've even heard Aaron Rubin articulate all of this before so I felt validated, but a lot of AvA is just Tom doing the same few things he did in blink but dressing it up with a few bells and whistles. If you take some blink music, lower the tempo, swap the distortion for delay, then repeat things ad nauseam so the songs have 7-minute run times... boom, Angels and Airwaves. Same chord progressions and melodic tendencies but different speed and sound design.

But the unfortunate thing, like you mentioned, is that without someone guiding him, he just freely indulged in the same (few) patterns. So his songwriting had less variety than it ever had ("creative rut" was an accurate way to describe that) despite him and his fans insisting he was on this creative breakthrough. That's why he didn't just suddenly snap back to "blink mode" with Neighborhoods - even though he had really not done anything that technically different from blink while in AvA, his songwriting had devolved so much that it still just felt off. And having no producer and a lack of collaboration with Mark and Travis allowed it to stay that way.

Echoing what everyone else has said, I can only really listen to the Rubin-involved AvA records anymore.

 

Cmon now…Spellbound and Automatic are easily far better than anything on Cali and Nine.

not even close

 

I love Lifeforms. it was all i needed to feel confident tom is happy to be a musician again. really nice appetizer to the return of blink. The show I went to was incredible as well. I wish all that’s left is love was on the album and fire in a nameless town wasn’t but other than that it’s pretty rad. At some point a modern ava album revisiting the elements of the first two albums but with Ilan writing with Tom would rule. I love Diary and if they did a whole release in that style i’d be psyched to hear it.

 

This has to be top 5 absolute punk lore moments. that must have been bonkers the day that dropped.

 

No one believed it was actually him (including me), everyone was scrambling.

 

Lifeforms is their best and I also really like The Dream Walker but the production/mixing is dogshit

 

Def some good stuff on The Dream Walker as well.

Always been curious about the film he made based on that album iirc, was it good lol

 

the animated short film? no lol

 

I don’t agree but even if I did that wouldn’t necessarily dispute what I said. But, um, it’s also okay if you disagree with me!

 

absolutely not

 

"Automatic" is easily a top 10 AVA song, if not top 5. But I'd take a couple Nine songs and "Bored to Death" over that one.

 

I would not put a single AvA song over any Blink song on any album. And that's not even close for me.

 

I’d certainly say the Adventure, for example, is better than like Fentoozler or TV lol

 

"Fentoozler" is one of my favorites on CC, and I'd put it above "The Adventure," easily. I'm not being hyperbolic, I like everything from Blink exponentially more than AvA. But do like Lifeforms. Which I like way, way, way more than anything else in their catalog.

 

I’d take a couple AvA songs over something like Parking Lot, but not over anything on a proper Blink album, including Cheshire Cat which even at its worst is at least abundant in charm.

 

https://www.newsblur.com/newsletters/story/9623359:adb2bd

On Thursday, Mark and I were looking at paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago and I said I was going to head back to our hotel early to shower before our show at the Riviera Theater that night, our fifth show of the book tour. As soon as I got down the stairs to the subway platform, my phone started ringing. “We’re number one,” Mark said. I said Oh my god Oh my god holy shit Mark Oh fuck. Then I hung up and the people around me thought I was insane. Number one, I shouted. We did it. We fucking did it!!!

Three hours later, Mark and I were on stage looking out onto a thousand faces and I was doing my favorite part of the show, the part where I introduce him and give him his much deserved due. I rattled off his life achievements—getting nominated for a Grammy, founding three beloved bands, being the star of the movie American Pie, etc. And then I got to add a new one to the list. “As of an hour ago, he is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, FAHRENHEIT-182.” The place went fucking wild and I did too inside. On the outside I remained cool but inside I was pumping my fist in the air and screaming hell yeah. HELL YEAH.

 

I have absolutely zero nostalgia attached to Cheshire Cat and didn’t listen to it until it was prob a decade old after growing up intensely on Enema & TOYPAJ.

So no way I was ever going to turn CC on and be like “hell yeah” after being very used to those songs with crystal clear production/mixing as a kid in 4th grade haha

Plus, AVA’s prime was while I was in 7th grade - 10th grade so those albums just overall had more of an impact on me

 

glimpses of the greatness to come on that one.
considering scooping the cheshire merch out right now. hadn’t revisited in forever but been jamming since the book dropped.

 

Pretty much Tom dicking around BUT i think you could make a decent LP (maybe a long EP) saving a cool song or two of each release. I remember specially enjoying a couple of songs of the “Chasing Shadows” EP and The Wolfpack.

 

There are 3-4 AVA songs that maybe compete with my least favorite 3-4 blink songs. I like every BCR and +44 song more than every AVA song though so that’s where the gap gets closer.

 

Lifeforms is best but Anamoly is probably my favorite AVA song. Last two albums you can tell somebody besides Tom had input lol. I'd rather listen to Anamoly than This Is Home or Pretty Little Girl? But that's probably as far as I go lol

 

I just LOVE Lifeforms guys sorry haha

 

I’d put the AvA catalog over anything any of the other members of Blink released between Untitled and OMT.