The Mark, Tom and Travis show will soon be getting Travis back.

After spending several weeks on the road with the Transplants, the drummer is returning to his day job next week to finish Blink-182's next record. Barker said at Saturday's "mtvICON: Metallica" taping that while he was away, his bandmates wrote four songs that he will soon add drums to.

"We're about halfway through the album," singer/bassist Mark Hoppus added. "We are actually recording in this house out in the middle of nowhere. It's so comfortable that we've been there four months [and] we have six songs done. So in a year we might be done."

Longtime collaborator Jerry Finn is producing the album, which may include the tentatively titled tracks "Down," "Obvious," "I Miss You" and "I Should Have Got Caught." Hoppus said the material is rooted in the traditional Blink-182 sound but expands in different directions.

"I think it's going to surprise a lot of people," he said. "There's ... a lot faster stuff, there's a lot slower stuff, and Travis has been doing a lot of different beats. And we have some acoustic stuff in there. We have some keyboard stuff in there. We have some electronic stuff in there. I think it's going to be pretty cool."

Once the album is completed, Blink-182 are planning some shows in the Middle East, or as Barker put it, "some sh-- for the troops." The band's spokesperson had no additional details.

According to Blink-182's Web site, the group is finishing the album on an island in Fiji, overlooking a hot surf spot.

Meanwhile, before wrapping up a tour with the Foo Fighters, Barker and fellow Transplants Tim Armstrong (of Rancid) and Rob Aston managed to write the group's next album and appear on Snoop Dogg's "Doggy Fizzle Televizzle."

The Transplants performed "Tall Cans in the Air" with Snoop, who wrote a new rap for the song. Barker said the performance might be the band's next video.

--Corey Moss with additional reporting by [article id="1453177"]Iann Robinson[/article]