"We started writing our songs about pee-pee and poo-poo over 20 years ago," says Tom DeLonge, the eternal 10-year-old who's been setting fire to bags of faeces on the doorstep of punk rock since 1992. But Blink-182 are the dick joke that got – ahem – mind-blowingly big. On their mainstream breakthrough with 1999's Enema of the State, they were three snickering Stiflers dry-humping the charts with 15m-selling records that diffused the righteous aggression of US hardcore with relentless melody, puerile scatology and an insistent questioning of the blemish-free virtue of the listener's mom.

Over time, they inspired real devotion by growing in depth and emotion – I Miss You and Ghost on the Dancefloor are devastatingly forlorn tonight – and their pioneering brand of emo pop set the blueprint for populist punk from the Vans Warped tour to Biffy Clyro and McBusted. Then a three-year split involving painkiller addiction for DeLonge and a near-fatal plane crash for drummer Travis Barker found them reforming in 2008 as rounded, inspirational legends singing as much about death as dongs.

Not that you'd sniff an ounce of maturity in the inter-song banter between DeLonge and bassist Mark Hoppus tonight, which still makes The Inbetweeners sound like Chomsky v Foucault – "This one will come on your chest!" yelps DeLonge, introducing a dirtied-up Down. They're still a two-gear act too, either flooring it like emo F1 drivers through All the Small Things, The Rock Show and Feeling This or powering epically down the middle lane on Stay Together for the Kids and After Midnight. Yet for 90 minutes the energy and melody never lets up, even when they throw in a cover of the Misfits' Hybrid Moments or play a song entirely in the dark.

"I guess this is growing up," Hoppus sings on Dammit as a giant flaming "FUCK" burns behind them. Not exactly, but it's certainly a mastery of the art of dumbass.