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Blink-182’s former lead vocalist Tom DeLonge left the band last year, with the whole ordeal sounding like a messy tale of crossed-wires. After numerous delays holding up their seventh studio album, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker dropped DeLonge from the band and replaced him with Alkaline Trio lead vocalist Matt Skiba. Until now, it wasn’t exactly clear what caused the delays and the whole situation in general, but thanks to an interview with Mic, we finally have the answer.

“Well it’s not so much about Blink,” he said. “It’s about what I’m doing with my life now. When you’re an individual like me, dealing with something that’s a national security issue, and you’re being gifted with the opportunity to communicate something you’ve been passionate about your whole life—something that has the opportunity to change the world over time—being a small part of that is enormously important for my life path,” he explained. That “national security issue” he’s on about? UFOs, to be precise.

Throughout his musical career, DeLonge has expressed an interest in for aliens, UFOs, and space in general. He even released an album last year titled To the Stars…, which was effectively his debut solo album despite consisting of Blink-182 demos for the most part. But, perhaps most interestingly, he’s launched a franchise titled Sekret Machines, which will look into “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” The ambitious franchise will include a number of fiction and nonfiction books, alongside new music from his band Angels & Airwaves.

Speaking about how he got interested in aliens in the first place, he explained, “First of all, we don’t really call it ‘aliens.’ In pop culture, that’s a term people throw out there, and rightfully so because the government spends a lot of time and a lot of money throwing that term out there.” When asked about what evidence there is, he added, “I don’t think I’m going to be the person that offers the best evidence unless people really trust what I’m doing and believe me. There’s been hundreds and hundreds of thousands of eyewitness accounts. Trace evidence that’s been analyzed by scientists across the world. Events have happened on the ground. It’s all around us. I know of stuff I can’t talk about right now.”

Read the full interview here.

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