Blink-182 announced Tom DeLonge's return on October 11, 2022 with a world tour and a single, "Edging," due that Friday. It put DeLonge back alongside Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker for the first time since 2015. The album behind it, One More Time..., came out in October 2023 and opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the band's third chart-topper. There was a harder story underneath: Hoppus had disclosed a cancer diagnosis in June 2021, declared himself cancer-free by the end of that year, and the three had spent time together before his chemo started.
Go back far enough and it's Hoppus and DeLonge in 1992, playing YMCAs, basements and VFW halls around San Diego. Cargo Records put out Cheshire Cat in 1995. "Dammit," off 1997's Dude Ranch, got them on the radio. Original drummer Scott Raynor was fired in 1998, and Barker, then with the Aquabats, took over. Enema of the State followed in 1999 and went past 15 million sold, with "What's My Age Again?" and "All the Small Things" in constant MTV rotation.
DeLonge has walked out twice. He left in 2005 and came back after Barker survived a 2008 plane crash that killed four people. Then he left again, and Matt Skiba held the guitar spot long enough to make California (2016) and Nine (2019). The Hoppus-DeLonge-Barker version is the one at the top of Sonic Temple's Thursday bill.