The mission statement put forward by Dogs Eating Dogs didn’t quite go as planned. As relationships broke down again, Tom quit the band. As the show must go on, Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba joined and in 2016 Blink 182 released their first record without Tom Delonge. Vastly different to Neighborhoods and Dogs Eating Dogs, California plays it pretty safe. Its 16 tracks rarely deviate from the guitar-led modern pop punk music Blink 182 help inspire. California has a lot of solid tracks, but the experimentation of the 2011 to 2013 has completely gone. This isn’t the only case of fans reaction and inability to deal with change influencing how a musician or film (ahem, The Rise of Skywalker) is made. Blink 182 played it safe but with so many voices crying out for them to hark back to the glory days of Dude Ranch and Enema of the State its unsurprising the band released something easy and widely consumable for their pop punk fan base.



This Blink 182 era is one of experimentation, and it’s one of the band trying ideas that would keep them engaged and interested in making music for this band again. I think making songs like these are a big step if you’re most recognisable for radio friendly pop punk mega hits. It’s a shame these releases weren’t thought of more highly of at the time, but they were tainted with the controversies of the band’s strained relationships, constant delays and a lack of a style of music the fans wanted. If you’re a Blink 182 fan you should revisit this era, as it’s in stark contrast to what they’re doing now with California (2016) and Nine (2019). Even the band seem to have forgot this era with no songs from Neighborhoods or Dogs Eating Dogs being played in their live shows since 2014. But with tracks like Ghost on the Dance Floor, Natives, After Midnight, When I Was Young and Pretty Little Girl, this era contains some of the best stuff the band released since 2003.