Blink-182: Neighborhoods Review

Synopsis:
Blink-182 is an American pop punk band consisting of vocalist and bass guitarist Mark Hoppus, vocalist and guitarist Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker. They have sold over 27 million albums worldwide since forming in Poway, California in 1992. With original drummer Scott Raynor they released their debut album Cheshire Cat in 1994 and achieved moderate success with its follow-up, 1997's Dude Ranch, which went on to sell over one million copies. Raynor was replaced by Barker midway through a 1998 tour. There is obviously plenty more history, but for the sake of a summary, this is where it all began.


Review:
There is a tremendous bias towards main stream bands when it comes to reviews and I will get into that briefly for the sake of my overall score. Two words “Musical Progression” we constantly hear about bands not progressing their sound and “Neighborhoods” is a prime example. This album was given really high scores, but nobody mentioned a word about how this band has sounded the same for about a decade. Granted their sound appeals to a mass group of people, but that does not mean they shouldn’t have to try like other bands do. Hoppus’s vocals are what you have already heard, Barker is still one of the nastiest drummers in the entire world. It just seems with that much potential you wouldn’t hear similar tracks after all these years. It seems with this album Blink-182 is more like a “Sheppard” and less like a band, and yes that was a mass media “Sheep Joke”. There are also a couple tracks that seem pointless on an album like this such as “Snake Charmer”. Blink-182 put tons of production value into “Neighborhoods” and it shows with a very crisp sound. If you loved Blink-182 long ago, then not much has changed….no seriously. I hate to say it but adding a synthesizer intro to every song is not musical progression. I am not the only person that feels this way however over all the millions of fans it won’t realistically matter at the end of the day. Blink-182 fans enjoy the monotony.

Track List

    1. Ghost On The Dance Floor

2. Natives

3. Up All Night

4. After Midnight

5. Snake Charmer

6. Heart's All Gone - Interlude

7. Heart's All Gone

8. Wishing Well

9. Kaleidoscope

10. This is Home

11. MH 4.18.2011

12. Love Is Dangerous

13. Fighting The Gravity

14. Even If She Falls

2/5

Article by: Larry Harris