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Angels and Airwaves is a solo project created by blink-182 guitarist, Tom DeLonge. His friend and former Box Car Racer member David Kennedy, Offspring drummer Atom Willard and Distillers former bass-player Ryan Sinn are also members of Angels and Airwaves. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office DeLonge trademarked "Angels and Airwaves" on June 24, 2005 amidst the lingering confusion of blink-182's abruptly announced hiatus. Although no specific release date for an album has been set, DeLonge claims that his new project will be "the best music made in decades" as well as being "much more powerful, emotional and melodic than Box Car and blink put together".
In an interview with British magazine Kerrang! DeLonge commented about the band's beginning: "Just before all the blink-182 shit happened when we were in Europe, I had a really weird epiphany. My heart was beating about a hundred miles a minute for three weeks straight and it had never happened to me before in my life. I really felt like I'd been touched by something and I felt I was meant to do something massive."
In addition to the corresponding release of the album, the band is currently working on a movie involving the band's music. The World War II-based movie is being created primarily through the use of CGI. This "story" is apparently based upon Tom's life and will give viewers insight into the hiatus of blink-182. Currently, the only known cast member is Michael Ostman.
Originally, "Valkyrie Missile" was slated for release iTunes on December 13, 2005, DeLonge's 30th birthday. However, due to discussions with their record label, Geffen, the band decided to push the release date back to a later date. Instead, the Angels and Airwaves website produced the first ever glimpse at the movie currently in production, a 1-and-a-half minute long trailer featuring portions of the delayed song.
Angels & Airwaves released their first single, "The Adventure", on May 18, 2006. They released their first album, We Don't Need to Whisper, a few days later on May 23, 2006. The album reached 4th on the Billboard 200, and went gold.
The song 'Start The Machine' is thought to be about the break up of Blink-182.
On May 26, 2006 "We Don't Need To Whisper" was certified gold in Canada. The album has also gone silver in the U.K.
Ryan out - Matt in
On April 23rd, 2007 - Ryan Sinn's 28th birthday - it was announced that he did not play the Free Earth Day concert at the M.I.T. campus the day before, due to difficulties with the band. Following this incident, on May 15th Sinn posted on the Army of Angels fan club message board, stating that he was no longer a part of Angels & Airwaves. He was said to have received a call on the evening of April 19th concluding his relationship with the band. Sinn reportedly began playing with Love Equals Death. In May 2008 Ryan departed from his post-Angels and Airwaves band "on good terms". Sinn's website now promotes his involvement in The Innocent, a notably more aggressive band than Angels and Airwaves. Sinn's relationship with DeLonge and the other Angels has seemingly discontinued. He auctioned-off his Signature DeLonge Gibson, a gift by Tom, shortly after his departure.
DeLonge has since talked about Sinn's departure, telling Kerrang, "He's a really great person and a really great bass player. But we had different priorities and he had things going on in his life that he needed to take care of. The rest of us were relying on him to tackle those things, but he couldn't do it. And so it put him into a defensive position."
Matt Wachter, previously of 30 Seconds to Mars, covered for him for the tour and was later confirmed as a permanent member of Angels & Airwaves.
Tom DeLonge revealed in an interview with Kerrang! the new album would be titled I-Empire and would be released on Universal/Island records. He stated that the new album will be stripped down, a departure from the heavy effects found in We Don't Need To Whisper. DeLonge also revealed that I-Empire would contain 12 tracks, including "Star of Bethlehem", which was recorded in late 2006 and had already been released on the KROQ 2006 Christmas CD. I-Empire debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at No.9 with sales of 66,000 in its first week. It also reached number one on the iTunes Top Albums chart. The sales have dropped considerably since then; third week sales put the album at No. 103 on the Billboard 200 chart.
On June 18, 2007, the band released a newly designed website depicting a motorcyclist and a flash application with flashing text that read "I-Empire, Fall 2007". The flash application also played a short music clip, which is from the intro of "Love Like Rockets", along with a portion of a speech from President Dwight D. Eisenhower via the Project SCORE Satellite from 1958. The portion of this message included on the website is, "Through the marvels of scientific advance, my voice is coming to you from a satellite circling in outer space... Through this unique means I convey to you and to all mankind, America's wish for peace on Earth..." The flash application ended with the quotation "If I had my own world... I'd build you an empire...".
The first single from the new album, "Everything's Magic", was leaked onto the internet, and on August 25, 2007 it was the most requested song on California radio station KROQ. Angels & Airwaves began streaming the song on their MySpace profile on August 28, 2007. It also became available on iTunes, and reached number three on the iTunes Rock Chart on September 11, 2007, before the song was even made available for nationwide airplay. The song received a lot of criticism by fans due to the fact that the intro sounds very similar to the blink-182 song, "Anthem, Pt. 2". Several videos were made on Youtube where the two tracks were played over each other, displaying the evident similarity of the songs. On December 28, 2007, Matt announced on Modlife that Secret Crowds will be the next single. The song went to radio on February 4, 2008. The band shot the video for the single on January 20th and 21st, and it premiered on MTV2 Unleashed on February 25th, 2008.
Angels & Airwaves have announced they are planning on releasing a documentary involving their music, titled Start the Machine, as well as a feature film entitled I-Empire, named after the upcoming album. The documentary has been submitted to several festivals for consideration, and DeLonge has said he hopes it will be released to theaters in 2008 before coming out on DVD. In an interview with SuicideGirls, David Kennedy described the feature film as "all these vignettes that intertwine kind of like Pink Floyd's The Wall meets Crash". On August 29, 2007, Angels & Airwaves updated their website with a new trailer for the upcoming album. The trailer shows a montage of video from the upcoming I-Empire film and the upcoming documentary, featuring the new song "Secret Crowds". Additionally, another trailer was uploaded detailing the motion picture endeavors of the band.
