Angels & Airwaves (also known as "AVA") are an alternative rock group fronted by former Blink-182 and Box Car Racer guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge. The band includes guitarist David Kennedy, notably from Over My Dead Body, Hazen Street and Box Car Racer, former Rocket From the Crypt and Offspring drummer Atom Willard, and former 30 Seconds to Mars bassist Matt Wachter, who replaced former The Distillers bassist Ryan Sinn in May 2007. The band has released two albums thus far: We Don't Need to Whisper (2006) and I-Empire (2007). They released a documentary entitled Start the Machine on 17 June, 2008. They also plan on releasing a feature film involving their music, entitled I-Empire.

According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, DeLonge trademarked the name "Angels and Airwaves" on June 24, 2005 amidst the lingering confusion of blink-182's abruptly announced "indefinite hiatus". DeLonge quickly recruited friends and fellow musicians David Kennedy, Ryan Sinn and Atom Willard to round out the band's roster.

In an interview with British magazine Kerrang!, DeLonge commented about the band's beginning:
"Just before all the blink-182 stuff 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."

We Don't Need to Whisper and Sinn's departure

Tom DeLonge began working on the debut album, We Don't Need To Whisper, shortly after Blink-182 began their hiatus in February 2005. As rumors were floating around about the band's "indefinite hiatus", DeLonge chose to abstain for half a year from any interviews surrounding the issue and his future plans. Instead he concentrated on writing and recording in his home-based studio. In September 2005, he finally spoke publicly in Kerrang! magazine, where he unveiled the name of his new band - "Angels & Airwaves". Upon fiddling randomly for several weeks with the band's logo, Tom suddenly realized that if he were to invert the middle A of the acronym (A)ngels (A)nd (A)irwaves into what appeared to be a V, he would have the name of his daughter, Ava.

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.

On April 23, 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 15 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 19 concluding his relationship with the band. Sinn's relationship with DeLonge and the other members has seemingly discontinued. He auctioned off his signature DeLonge Gibson, a gift from 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.

I-Empire

Tom DeLonge revealed in an interview with Kerrang! that 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. The album cover of I-Empire was drawn by Drew Struzan who also did the work of many Star Wars and other LucasArts movie posters. DeLonge once stated on this subject that, "We said only that it needed a 'heroic' vibe, with '70s attributes and a bit of a sci-fi ingredient. We saw the finished product, and we never looked so good. It's the best thing our band ever did for branding our music."

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 flash application ended with the quotation "If I had my own world... I'd build you an empire...", which are lyrics from the song "Secret Crowds".

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 20 and 21, and it premiered on MTV2 Unleashed on February 25, 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 their second 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 second album. The trailer showed a montage of video from the upcoming I-Empire film and the upcoming documentary, featuring "Secret Crowds". Additionally, another trailer was uploaded detailing the motion picture endeavors of the band.

Post I-Empire

At recent concerts, the band has covered "Not Now" and "Reckless Abandon" by Blink-182, and "There Is" and "My First Punk Song" by Box Car Racer.

Both Angels & Airwaves' MySpace and Warped Tour's Kevin Lyman have confirmed that Angels & Airwaves will be playing all of Warped Tour 2008.

On March 17, 2008, DeLonge stated in a blog on the band's Modlife site that the band were working on remixes of certain songs. DeLonge also mentioned on Modcam that there are in fact two albums in the pipeline, one will be a 'punk rock' album which will be "Just for the fun of it" according to Delonge and the second will return to the familiar epic sound of AVA.

Cinema

Among short films for many of the songs from We Don't Need to Whisper and I-Empire, Angels & Airwaves have filmed two full-length films: Start the Machine, a documentary, and I-Empire, a science-fiction movie. I-Empire will be soundtracked by the band's music.

The Start the Machine documentary DVD was released on June 17, 2008. You can read more about Start The Machine here.

Modlife

Modlife is an online operating system for musicians. The website is in beta form as of now. DeLonge has stated that ModLife is his attempt to "fix" the music industry. He believes that music should be free and the intimate blogs and videos of the musicians should fund the artists. Currently on ModLife, Angels & Airwaves require a membership to view the many features, but allow visitors to stream their latest effort, I-Empire, in its entirety for free.

DeLonge stated in a blog on March 20, 2008 that the ModLife website was now completely built. He also mentioned that other bands are being set up with their own Modlife pages, and that Modlife will properly launch before Warped Tour 2008, including user-created pages. You can read more about the Modlife here.

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