10 Rock Music Bands That Replaced Their Singer
9. Blink-182
It becomes a bit of a different beast when you have to replace someone in a power trio. Since you only have three people to work with at the best of times, each member has to hold down equal weight to make sure that everything stays on track, and if you don't have the right guy, everything is going to fall apart. Then again, some fans would argue that Tom DeLonge was not pulling his share of the weight long before he got fired.
After already going on hiatus because everyone wasn't on the same page back in 2003, Blink-182's return to form felt like it should have worked on Neighborhoods, only for the band to get back into some bad habits as Tom started to make stuff that sounded a lot closer to Angels and Airwaves. Stretching out every new project for longer and longer wait times, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker got tired of waiting around, deciding to kick Tom out of the fold and move on with Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio for albums like California and Nine.
As much as both of these albums seem to get flak from some of the old fans for not being punk enough, none of that is the result of what Matt Skiba brings to the table. Matt has always been known for playing on the more gothic side of punk rock, and his more flexible pipes is a nice change of pace after Tom's voice started to get blown out on the past few Blink tours. There's still punk in Blink's foundation...it just might be filtered through a band like the Cure rather than the Ramones these days.