10 Perfect Supergroups In Rock History
7. Box Car Racer
After going in to create Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, Tom DeLonge was looking for a bit of a change of pace. Though the sounds of Blink-182 were growing by leaps and bounds on songs like Stay Together for the Kids, there's only so far you could go with the band that was known for more pop centric songs like All the Small Things. Tom needed something a little more edgy, and Box Car Racer was the darker mirror image of what Blink was doing.
Being inspired by the post hardcore that was coming out at the time, most of this record feels like a more aggro version of what Blink would have made, with Mark Hoppus bowing out and Tom keeping Travis Barker along to help realize his vision. For all of the Blink connections that are on this album though, you can tell that Tom is looking for something different, wearing his heart on his sleeve a little more on ballads like There Is and dialing in guitar tones that could even pass for metal on songs like I Feel So.
The lyrics also take a step up here as well, with Elevator alluding to the 9/11 attacks that happened just a few months before and Letters To God dealing with Tom's complicated views on faith, which was apparently still on his mind when he wrote a sequel in the Love era of Angels and Airwaves. While the rest of Blink were never quite able to get back on the same page after making this record, this is still a nice peek into what else makes Tom tick musically.