Manchester Evening News review

Manchester Evening News review

AFTER selling over 20 million records worldwide with his previous band blink-182, does Tom DeLonge’s new band Angels And Airwaves have the drive and talent to produce a great debut album? The resounding answer is 'Yes'.

Opening track ‘Valkyre Missile’ is a perfect summary of the album in an epic six minute hit. This is a sophisticated piece of work dressed up as a rock-out single. Old sounds, new sounds - they've taken all that is blink-182 and purified it.

There are some genuinely breathtaking moments - ‘The Adventure’, with its echo guitar riff in the style of The Edge from U2, ‘A little’s Enough’ and the beautifully simple ‘The Gift’.

Highlights

‘Distraction’ is one of the albums highlights, with DeLonge’s storybook lyrics about World War Two soldiers in combat - “The planes flew in, their bombs did too. The city fell flat, the fires, they grew. When the smoke comes in, it’ll colour this town, but I’ll still have you”.

The range of unique sounds, emotions and joyfulness crammed into ‘We Don’t Need To Whisper’ make it hard to resist and simply too good to ignore. The blink-182 lyrical style is, of course, very noticeable, but there's a confidence, maturity and energy that pushes this release well beyond his previous band's work.

DeLonge personally claims Angels & Airwaves is "the best music made in decades". Obivously, this is not the best record ever made, but it's certainly the best record DeLonge has ever made.

- Scott Zverblis (ManchesterEveningNews.co.uk)

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