In 2015, Tom DeLonge left blink-182 for good to focus on his solo endeavours, and though fans have continually held their breath for a reunion (and the man himself recently said the new Angels & Airwaves album has glimmers of blink and Box Car Racer), he wants people to stop comparing the two.

“Even when I got divorced, there was this thing where people felt like they had to take sides,” he lamented during an interview with Kerrang!. “But there are no sides. blink-182 is amazing, but it’s monopolising. It takes up so much of your brain space, and a lot of that is celebrating things that you did a long time ago. Angels & Airwaves was never meant to recreate blink’s lightning-in-a-bottle [magic]. It's supposed to be just one piece of this larger artistic thing. People don’t need to compare.”

While that reunion might not happen any time soon, DeLonge talks to his ex-bandmates now more than ever, telling the outlet he messages Travis Barker a few times a week and talks to Mark Hoppus multiple times a day. “We’re like brothers. We’ll get really angry about something due to miscommunication for like a year. We’re dumb men. But then it’s like, ‘My bad, what’s up?’” he confessed.

“I’m not motivated by money and fame,” he added. “If I wanted to do things easier, I could. I’m motivated by getting people to feel things and to open their eyes a little bit. Where I’ve ended up makes no sense unless you look at my entire life and all the things I’ve done. I was building businesses, but those businesses were never giant to the point where I was gonna go retire. I was in a band doing really big s***, but I was never really artistically satisfied. I’ve got money but I’m not gonna sit in my living room and do nothing [with it]. I was never just gonna phone it in.”

AVA's new album, LIFEFORMS, comes out on September 24. The band plans to tour on the album this fall. Check out a full list of dates here.