Nine
by blink-182
  • Record Label: Columbia
  • Release Date: Sep 20, 2019
User Score
6.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 103 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 66 out of 103
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 103
  3. Negative: 24 out of 103
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  1. Blinkfloyd
    Sep 26, 2021
    0
    Soulless and plastic. I cannot believe a band with Matt Skiba could produce an album this bad. The formula went from three guys writing an album to now have like 18 writers and it shows. This is blink trying their hardest to stay relevant and it reeks of desperation.
  2. MeeranQureshi
    Oct 5, 2019
    0
    Bland music with cringeworthy lyrics. Terrible sound and lots of autotune.Sounds like some high school kids singing.Horrible record.
  3. Skydog
    Sep 21, 2019
    0
    Edit: Dr. VanillaD- no I am not a Tom fanboy. Hate Angels and Hairspray with Glitter too.This blink album might as well have been an entire collab with every fake vocal edited “can’t sing live” pop star of the 2010s. It’s such a pop infested swamp of vile. So your review is just an attack at me, and an incorrect assumption as well.

    The singles already scared me enough, but honestly    Edit: Dr. VanillaD- no I am not a Tom fanboy. Hate Angels and Hairspray with Glitter too.This blink album might as well have been an entire collab with every fake vocal edited “can’t sing live” pop star of the 2010s. It’s such a pop infested swamp of vile. So your review is just an attack at me, and an incorrect assumption as well.

    The singles already scared me enough, but honestly thought the entire thing was trash. They
    desperately need Tom back after California and now this. This album is littered with so much vocal edits/autotune and is really noticeable and horrible in anything trying to be rock.

    Pros:
    - They tried. They really tried to branch out but they went the wrong way. Hiphop-wannabe-punk rock is not the route to go with the band. It sounds horrible.

    Cons:
    - Autotune/vocal editing very much present on almost every track.
    - Not enough time for Travis Barker to shine compared to early albums. They literally put so many handclaps/electronic hi-hat (which is already used enough in every other pop/hiphop song...) that I don't get why they seem to be wanting to abandon their roots. They should let Barker do more drum solos like in the past. When they did let him drum he did a lot of generic-rock beats.    … Expand
  4. Sodapopboxwell
    Sep 20, 2019
    1
    "I feel like a melted popsicle. Give me a flu shot and take me to the hospital."
    This is what blink has come too. It's so bad its laughable. A real shame coming from them. This album is **** awful.
  5. Barbosz
    Oct 29, 2019
    2
    Ever since Tom DeLonge left the band, it's almost impossible to listen to them. Every album sucks major balls nowadays with production skipped all together it seems, songs written by a 12 year old and in general, it sound like musical diarrhoea. Sweet jesus
  6. skanonoy
    Sep 23, 2019
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Step backwards. The album
    Did not grow up as with its older fans but obviously targeted to much younger audiences. Young folks may like it but blink has become something that is not my cup of tea anymore. Other bands were able to grow with thier fans gracefully but what blink is doing is cringe worthy.    … Expand
  7. musicmaniac
    Sep 23, 2019
    0
    One of the worst albums of the past 10 years. What were they thinking... Lady Gaga hits harder than they do now. LMAO.
    Ignore the 10's on here.. they must be Kanye fans.
  8. JupiterMan
    Sep 20, 2019
    0
    Embarrassing crap for a 47 years old bassist. Blink 182 was Tom Delonge. He is better chasing aliens.
  9. HumanoidGREY
    Sep 24, 2019
    2
    The one thing I always liked about Blink's music was that somehow, it always sounded simpel, catchy and unique. Nine has none of those points. It is really hard for me to say something bad about this band. They (the original members) got me through my teen years and most of my mature life too, and always put a smile on my face. But with Nine I didn't smile once. Somehow Mark, Matt andThe one thing I always liked about Blink's music was that somehow, it always sounded simpel, catchy and unique. Nine has none of those points. It is really hard for me to say something bad about this band. They (the original members) got me through my teen years and most of my mature life too, and always put a smile on my face. But with Nine I didn't smile once. Somehow Mark, Matt and Travis managed to create an album that wants to be the self titled album from 2003 but practically fails to do so in every imaginable way. They tried giving it all a bit of an electronic sound but took away everything that makes Blink what it is in the process. Hardly any catchy melodies or guitar riffs, absolutely bland and uninspired lyrics to the point I couldn't care less what they were singing and a depressing vibe in a couple of songs that took me back to the dark Plus 44 days. But the dfference is that I actually like the Plus 44 album. And then there is this weird boy band style of music in some of the songs that really made me wonder if this was still Blink-182 I was listening to. I honestly loved the California Deluxe album, especially disc 2. It had a lot of catchy songs with some reasonable lyrics. It actually gave me hope that Blink could survive without Tom and still make great music. But then they release this album and all that hope is completely gone. If this is the future of Blink-182 then I am sorry to say that I am definitely not a fan anymore. Sure, those guys are getting older and are trying to make different styles of music but then why continue Blink-182? Mark had no problem in the past creating a new band (Plus 44) and lately joined forces with Alex Gaskarth to form Simple Creatures. It makes no sense to me to release an album under the name Blink-182 with music that sounds nothing like Blink-182 other than it being a quick cash grab. It sounds so little like Blink-182 that a friend of mine didn't even realize it was until I told him so. And for one of the biggest names in the industry, that is definitely not a good thing.… Expand
  10. Mathoppus182
    Sep 21, 2019
    3
    In punk rock or at least pop rock the main thing is... Rock...
    Not here.
    It became a random '' popy'' band. Runaway from it blink is legendary but maybe only Delonge's come back will can stop this crash...
  11. gasparpalagyi
    Sep 26, 2019
    2
    If there is one thing for sure about the new album by Blink-182 is that fans' reactions are so deeply diveded it sometimes seems like they aren't even arguing about the same record. However, after listening to NINE a few times, and reading through a couple of comments, the picture gets clearer.

    Simply put: NINE is not an album for those Blink-182 fans who were in their early teens    If there is one thing for sure about the new album by Blink-182 is that fans' reactions are so deeply diveded it sometimes seems like they aren't even arguing about the same record. However, after listening to NINE a few times, and reading through a couple of comments, the picture gets clearer.

    Simply put: NINE is not an album for those Blink-182 fans who were in their early teens around the time Dude Ranch, Enema, or Take Off came out. It was probably never really meant to please them, and it certainly was never meant to retain them as fans. This is a record meant for an entirely different target audience. Blink-182 has decided to try and make a living off of today's youngsters, as they are more likely to fill arenas, purchase band merch, and shower them in internet traffic income.

    The level of heat in the arguements between those who loved and those who disliked NINE seems to indicate the same. After a few minutes, it just sounds like people in their thirties arguing with people in their late teens and early twenties: two totally different generations who simply can't help annoying each other. Throwing in something as rare and valuable as a new Blink-182 album into this low-key, never-ending conflict, fought on the imaginary and absolutely pointless battlefields of Facebook and Youtube comment sections is just sad. And this is not about some idiotic Tom vs. Mark or Tom vs. Matt debate.

    About the album itself, as this is supposed to be a review of that: it doesn't even come close to being a decent effort. It's overproduced, overedited, overadvertised, and shows very little, if any connection to what Blink-182 sounds like. The closest connection it has to music previously played by the band is its title, as the naming NINE suggests it fits into the chain of earlier releases (but even that is debated!).

    Of course, there is always room for musicians to expand, to discover new depths, to toy around with new ideas, but they generally keep at least just enough of their previous, signature move-like sound and stlye that they stay recognisable. And this is where NINE fails: with the exception of "The first time" and "Generational Divide", none of the songs actually sound like Blink-182, and not even in the sense of Platonic Ideas. If you could somehow find someone who has not had any access to any part of NINE yet, not even singles, previews nor the title of the tracks, and played the album's content heavily mixed up with similar, current pop-style songs, he or she would have an almost impossible job to name which ones belong to Blink. The only thing to help in such a quest would be the fairly unmistakable voice of Mark Hoppus, but even that became distorted way more ofthen than not. Matt Skiba, the hero of Alkaline Trio, suffering from the same treatment, is almost unrecognisable compared to his other band's latest record (Is this thing cursed).

    Another unforgivable sin of NINE is that its lyrics are terrible. Although "mature" seems to be the most popular phrase when talking about Blink-182 nowdays, I find nothing remotely mature in those shallow, artificially dark-themed, cut-paste songs. Singing about depression (or rather, what Facebook Karens identify as depression) or not wanting to grow up (sang by a guy turning 47 this year) is not by any means mature. The nonsensical, ridiculous lines "I don't believe that we were ever meant to be left underneath the light of dying stars" (along with their atrociuos rhytm), when compared to the opening lines of Story of a Lonely Guy pinpoint just exactly how bad the situation is. It is beyond terrible. I would readily show my future son anything from old Blink when he hits puberty, to ease his mind and make him understand it's absolutely okay to be like that lonely guy. But there's nothing on NINE that would be of real impact. There are people claiming all around the comment sections "Happy days" cured them from depression, or even saved them for suicide. I call **** on that. If your problem can as simply be solved as listening to "Hey kid, don't quit your daydream yet", then it's your lucky day, because you never had a real problem in the first place. Again, a sympton of a whole generation.

    And the worst thing: it's true that Blink-182 songs have quite often got critcised for sounding the same in the past. But this time around, they really sound the same. None of them stand out, at least not in a good way. Former albums have different construction: Dude Ranch, Enema, Takeoff and even Self-titled all had a surprisingly similar amount of (more or less 3) real killers, the other songs being decent, hard-working filler songs. Neighborhoods, Dogs and California work more like American Idiot, being disc-long ballads divided lightly up to fairly similar songs that blend nicely together to form a complete entity, but without any hits or killers. But NINE is neither this or that. It has no real character besides being annyoing.

    Either that, or I got too old.    … Expand
  12. Bounty
    Sep 27, 2019
    0
    Plus qu'une déception, une désillusion totale, une claque dans la face qui fait pas du bien, presque des larmes de désespoir...
    J'ai grandi avec ce groupe, je suis devenu qui je suis ( aussi rien du tout que je sois) en les écoutant, en les vénérant presque. Ils ont toujours compté comme mon groupe N°1. J'ai adoré tous leurs albums, y compris California, Neighborhoods, et bien sur le self    Plus qu'une déception, une désillusion totale, une claque dans la face qui fait pas du bien, presque des larmes de désespoir...
    J'ai grandi avec ce groupe, je suis devenu qui je suis ( aussi rien du tout que je sois) en les écoutant, en les vénérant presque. Ils ont toujours compté comme mon groupe N°1. J'ai adoré tous leurs albums, y compris California, Neighborhoods, et bien sur le self titled...
    J'ai été heureux en écoutant Blink 182, j'ai versé des tonnes de larmes également, leurs morceaux ont accompagnés tellement de moments dans ma vie... Tristesse ou joie, il y a toujours eu du Blink pour m'accompagner.
    J'ai assisté 3 fois à leurs concerts, jetais dans la fosse au plus près à chaque fois, j'étais heureux. J'ai écris leurs noms et coller leurs stickers, porter leurs vêtements...
    Voila pour décrire ce que je ressent(ais) vis à vis de ce groupe.

    Nine n'est pas un album de Blink, et je ne sais pas ce que c'est.
    J'ai même plus la force ou l'envie de l'écouter.
    Quelle honte.

    Je fuis vers des groupes qui ne balancent pas leurs hardcore fans à la benne.

    Adieu Blink 182.    … Expand
  13. JordanLayton
    Apr 30, 2020
    2
    If "California" was the nail in blink's coffin, this album is the band's buried rotting corpse spasming around in said coffin, occasionally scrounging out one or two decent tracks thanks to the still-functioning spine (Travis), but mostly just spittling out any soulless mess it can to show it's still alive.
  14. Whathappened182
    Sep 26, 2021
    0
    This is the worst album to ever come out of the blink 182/alkaline trio camp. While California wasn't anything special (worst blink album before Nine), it still had some fun to it and was a rock album. Yeah, it felt like a band imitating blink 182 rather than the real thing but it was a good summer album. But Nine is just...crap. The rock elements are gone as this is straight up pop withThis is the worst album to ever come out of the blink 182/alkaline trio camp. While California wasn't anything special (worst blink album before Nine), it still had some fun to it and was a rock album. Yeah, it felt like a band imitating blink 182 rather than the real thing but it was a good summer album. But Nine is just...crap. The rock elements are gone as this is straight up pop with auto-tune galore, ear piercing pitch correction, and overall manufactured feel to it.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

32
#32 Most Discussed Album of 2019

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
67

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 10
  3. Negative: 1 out of 10
  1. Punknews.org (Staff)
    Sep 30, 2019
    40
    A few songs impress but the majority is meant to fill radio stations and leave you wondering where the magic this band held went. Probably outer space...
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  2. Pitchfork
    Sep 30, 2019
    52
    It’s surprising how well the new sound works, though the voice of Skiba doesn’t always mesh comfortably with the production. As always, angst and unrequited affections are aplenty, but it all feels far too tame.
    Read full review
  3. Punknews.org (Staff)
    Sep 30, 2019
    80
    The album is pretty much a joyride from start to finish, moving through a number of different styles, driven by some of the best damn drumming you’ve ever heard. And everyone involved in writing these songs (yes, including Feldmann) is a talented lyricist who knows how to craft excellent pop songs. So ultimately, it’s a brilliantly fun album if you have the fortitude to look past a lot of very annoying studio effects to listen to what Blink-183 are really saying.
    Read full review
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