Tom Delonge talks about upcoming Angels & Airwaves album, changing the world, makeup

Angels and Airwaves recently discussed their upcoming sophomore full length, I–Empire, which is due out October 23, 2007:

Before We Don't Need to Whisper, I came out and said that it was going to change the face of rock and roll, What I meant was over a 30–year period. It's been one year -- wait 29 more and you'll see how different your life is. Because it's still happening. What happens over the next six months to a year with I–Empire is going to continue that thought of what I really wanted the last record to do. It's a lot harder and a lot more ambitious than what I ever believed it to be, but what we're going to continue to try to do is to change a lot of things about music.

We were trying to [deal with] an industry that was in crisis, Records aren't selling anymore; people are burning music. So what we wanted to do was try to communicate our records across different formats. We were willing to put ourselves out there and try to make movies ... to make short films and do live events. It was very difficult. It took a lot of money, it took a lot of ambition, and it took a lot of risk. And it's very easy to tear a band down for trying.

He also makes a brief mention of the makeup/emo archetype, noting:

When you watch the news, it's really negative. When you listen to music, it's consistently it seems bands are angry, or they're covering themselves in makeup and crying and being weird about it. But with us, we like the idea of being optimistic.