Angels and Airwaves: More grounded these days.

Toward the end of their decade-long career, those potty-mouthed punks known as Blink-182 had finally started to mature. Blink's last album, a self-titled effort, had songs about more serious subjects. That mentality has also carried over to Angels and Airwaves, a relatively new band led by former Blink singer-guitarist Tom DeLonge. To date, it's released two albums - 2006's We Don't Need to Whisper and last year's I-Empire - and there's not a single reference to masturbation between them.

Speaking via phone from the offices of Macbeth, the footwear company he runs in Carlsbad, California, DeLonge often pauses to discipline his kids, telling them he's on the phone and can help them when he's finished. This from the guy who once went running naked through the streets for a Blink video.

"We had such a great run [with Blink] and leaving it was a major step for me," he explains. "It was a decision to restructure my life and put my family first. But I was also stripping myself of an identity I helped create for the past 15 years. I was also losing my best friends at the same time. It was a big transition for me. And I realize other people have heavier transitions to go through. When it comes down to the human level, everyone goes through the same sacrifices. [I-Empire] was about the extremes of human emotion. Things like love and fear."

I-Empire is a conceptual affair that picks up where the band's 2006 debut, We Don't Need to Whisper, left off. And according to DeLonge, making the album, which is a bit punchier and more straightforward than the lush We Don't Need to Whisper, was easier.

"We knew who we were and where we wanted to go," he says. "On the first album, there was a lot of discovery. We were mixing different ingredients together to see what would come out. This album happened in half the time, too, as the last one took a year to record. This one is more grounded and in the now. The last one was ethereal and atmospheric and very lofty in its goals. All the way through, they are the recordings of an emotional transition. I recorded what I was going through. They're very autobiographical."

The two albums together form a distillation of DeLonge's various musical interests. While he describes himself as a "modern rock kid," he also cites Peter Gabriel, the Who and the Cure as influences. He's a fan of contemporary punk and likes electronic music, too.

" I like some [electronic music] a lot," he explains. "Underworld from the UK was really influential. There's a great architecture of sound to their music. I like DJ Shadow and Thievery Corporation. I could get into different stuff, too. I just don't have time for it."

Though Angels' music won't be mistaken for Blink's, DeLonge says his bandmates (drummer Adam Willard, bassist Matt Wachter and guitarist David Kennedy) are just as funny and the band's fans have noticed how they're every bit as hilarious as his former Blink bandmates.

"These guys are funny as shit," he says. "Our Web site is full of videos and short films that are funny and off-color. They're super funny. We started attacking each other in some of our blogs. All these kids are commenting that the attitude of Blink is back. [My bandmates] are crazy funny."

But like the last Blink album, Angels' two discs are often described as showing off DeLonge's "maturity." It's a word that he's learned to embrace, even if it's often used to reduce the band's complexities to a single concept.

"It's fine. People have to write about something," he says. "We were doing that with the last record. With Blink, the message was that there wasn't a message. Angels and Airwaves is an experiment about trying to communicate with visuals and tell an autobiography and show everyone that they can do the same thing themselves."

He dismisses the idea that he'll ever want to return to Blink.

"I don't think so, only because I'm having so much fun with what I'm doing now," he says. "I really love this band. It's so epic. And it all just builds and builds and builds to the point that we're doing motion pictures now. Plus, these guys are some of my closest friends. I'm in a happy place. It is funny, though, that everyone asks me about a Blink reunion. Critics hated us back then. They were all pissed because we were constantly joking. It's only now that they think we were great."

Angels and Airwaves, Meg and Dia, The Color Fred, Ace Enders: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 26, House of Blues, 308 Euclid Ave., 216.241.5555. SOLD OUT.