Review: Blink-182 Delivered an Epic Tour Kickoff at Hard Rock Live

There is plenty of punk rock self-deprecation and ribald wait-what-is-their-age-again banter at a Blink-182 show in 2025.

Between songs, guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge takes good-natured potshots at himself for how few chords he uses; for not being able to watch Game of Thrones with his wife because he doesn’t want to invite comparison to a certain well-endowed character. Dudes were so primed to rechristen the Hollywood Hard Rock the Hollywood Hard Cock that the basement sale double entendre itself feels like a premature climax. And when the crowd erupts at the word that the band will be playing “Online Songs” for the first time in more than twenty years, bassist/vocalist Mark Hoppus says, “You cheer like that’s a good thing. But we’re gonna fuck it up pretty bad.”
And yet the mastery — veering not infrequently into legitimate sneakily sophisticated pop genius — on display throughout this, the opening date of Blink-182’s Missionary Impossible tour, belies the requisite devil-may-care pretense.
Seeking to feed the crowd what they wanted early on, the band, performing in a set designed to look like a flyer festooned a 200-capacity club, opened with standards "The Rock Show" and "First Date," then pulled out "Josie" from 1997's Dude Ranch for the first time since 2018. They honored the 1995 debut Cheshire Cat with a spirited "M+Ms." "Wishing Well" got its first performance with DeLonge in more than a decade, “Roller Coaster” has been the first since 2001, and the Descendents cover "Hope" has been the first in more than two decades.
But the key moment might have been performance of "Can't Go Back" from One More Time…Part 2, the 2024 reissue of 2023's One More Time — the reunion album with DeLonge after two full-lengths with Matt Skiba of opener Alkaline Trio, who joined the band for a rendition of his era’s “Bored to Death” after his own band’s reasonably well-received, workmanlike set. In the background during the song, a giant readout of an EKG heartbeat pulsed across a digital banner above the band — and it spoke volumes about just how vital and alive Blink-182 sounds more than three decades in. They can make an affecting and beautiful mash-up of the Blink sound and quasi-dark wave soundscapes like this, or the airy, transcendent “Feeling This” feel of a piece with the pop punk whirl and buzzsaw “Dammit” that first put them on the map.
God bless them for keeping the torches burning for their influenced — see the Fugazi, TSOL, and Bad Religion stickers on DeLonge’s guitar or drummer Travis Barker recently giving Minor Threat props by recreating the Complete Discography cover on a trip to D.C.— but the idea that Blink-182 is merely some “crappy” punk band (as the chryon during a goofy recorded intro by UFC hype man Bruce Buffer labeled them) is absurd. This band has survived breakups, interpersonal drama, cancer (Hoppus), and a plane crash (Barker) — and, rather than let that defeat or destroy them, it has channeled the scars and struggle into something transcendent and multifaceted.
All of which is to say, the show at the Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida, was a celebration of life and living, of change and the miracles we can conjure when led by integrity and perseverance. The crowd definitely knew this. And Blink-182 clearly knew it, too — even if they were perhaps loath to admit it.

If this is growing up, may we all age so gracefully.