This Is What Blink-182 Sounds Like Without Tom DeLonge

Now that is has been confirmed that Blink-182 are steaming ahead without their founding guitarist Tom DeLonge, who will be pretty busy this year anyway, live footage has emerged of the band performing with stand-in axeman, Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio, last night.

The band recently shared an image of the new-look, DeLonge-less Blink-182 coupled with other photos (below) showing them rehearsing for a string of club shows. They played the first of those shows at The Roxy in Hollywood last night, fan-shot footage of which you can watch below.

Reports Alternative Press, Skiba recently joined Hoppus on the latest episode of his Hi My Name Is Mark Podcast, to talk about his new role with Blink. “Tom and I have a very different guitar playing style,” Skiba said. “I had to kind of relearn guitar in a sense—but it was a lot of fun.

“I’ve been a fan of Blink for a long time. I’ve known you Mark for 15 years or something, and I was a fan of the band before we knew each other. I knew a lot of the songs already just lyrically, and, of course, it’s a totally different thing when you’re playing the songs. But it was a blast.”

After a few weeks of verbal fisticuffs between Blink’s founders, things seem to have now settled down, with drummer Travis Barker claiming recently that he is “in no way, shape or form” mad at DeLonge, but wishes that “he would own up to not wanting to be in the band and go do his other stuff”.

DeLonge has also spoken up, writing on Twitter that he could he could “never dislike” Mark Hoppus, but conspicuously did not make any mention of Barker. He’s got a busy year ahead of him anyway, announcing yesterday, also via Twitter, that he is “putting out 4 albums in one year- this year.”

One of those is suspected to be his Blink-182 demos-containing LP To The Stars which is due to drop on April 21st.