Travis Barker confirms new Blink-182 album is finished

By: Curtis Sindrey –

Blink-182’s Travis Barker. (Photo: Jeremy Deputat)

In a pair of new interviews from the 2016 Musink Music Festival, drummer Travis Barker has confirmed that the new Blink-182 album is finished, and that fans could expect a new single within the next two months, along with a summer tour, which is set to be announced within the next six weeks.

On working with producer John Feldmann (5 Seconds of Summer, All Time Low, Avicii, The Used), Barker said that working with him was similar to working with the band’s long-time producer Jerry Finn, who died in 2008.

“We never worked with a producer outside of Jerry Finn,” Barker said, “so when we got in to record this album, I somehow got back in touch with John and then he was like ‘man, we gotta catch up and have lunch or dinner’, and then we did, and then I was like ‘you should be working on the Blink album’, and literally the next day we were in the studio, and it has been a crazy three and a half or four weeks.”

In the studio, the band scrapped all of the 16 originally written songs and started fresh on a new batch that Barker described as “the best material we’ve written or put out in years”. Barker elaborated that the band worked 15-20 hour days during the recording process.

With the addition of Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba on guitar and vocals, Barker said of the creative process for the new album, “it was great to have someone who wants to be in the studio all the time with us. It has been amazing. I think the days of making great records, at least with Blink, the proof has been shown that it’s great when we’re all in the studio together.”

Barker elaborates, “I think just sending tracks and sending ideas back and forth through the internet, it can’t be as collaborative as it should be. I love us all being in the studio and throwing around ideas and really collaborating.”

Watch both interviews below.