Blink-182‘s ‘Neighborhoods’ album, their first in eight years, was recently released and the band is reflecting on its creation and what made them decide to reform after a bitter split.

During an interview with radio station KROQ, band member Mark Hoppus said that what makes Blink-182 work as a band is a sort of internal friction, a desire to expand on musical ideas in different ways. “There’s a tension in Blink-182 between Travis [Barker], Tom [DeLonge] and myself that somehow works,” Hoppus explains. “There’s a dynamic, a push and a pull between the three of us trying to take songs in different directions and that’s what makes a Blink-182 song.”

According to DeLonge, the band’s 2005 split was acrimonious.  “We all hated each other’s guts for no reason,” he says. “We don’t even know what we were fighting about. I was very open about it. I was like, I was never going to do this again. I really thought, never.”

In 2008, Barker was seriously injured in a plane crash, which caused the band members to reevaluate their relationship with one another. DeLonge recalls, “But then that plane crash happened, then you realize how stupid you’re acting  and how petty things are and then I started thinking, ‘Oh my God.’ I like the  idea of choosing not to do it but I didn’t like the idea of God and nature choosing for me. … After that I was kinda open to whatever.”

So they decided to put aside the old tensions. “No one wants a heavy heart with old friends,” says DeLonge. “We don’t even know what we were fighting about. That’s how stupid it was.”

 

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