But it was also an album that found the band striving to break out of the confines of the three-chords-and-a-laugh formula they had already perfected. Indeed, rumour has it that the band wrote the two aforementioned songs as a joke, to give their label the most blink-182 of blink-182 songs.
Elsewhere, though, songs such as on Stay Together For The Kids and Everytime I Look For You put the goofing on the backseat, instead opting for something that showed blink as a more serious proposition, as musicians and lyricists, drawing on influences from post-hardcore bands like Fugazi, and (in the case of the former), lyrically dealing with the break up of Tom’s parents.