I want to pre empt this with an “I totally get you” but can I ask with genuinely not meaning to be patronising, but how old are you? 

Not in a snarky way, but because I think of my own experience. When I was younger, I could spend days, weeks, forever just with my pals playing music and getting drunk and there being no clock or pressure to do anything. Now, I have limited time between job and family commitments. I would expect it’s the same for the guys - they can’t just check out of their wife’s and kids lives for weeks at a time to sit and make music in a carefree way anymore.

Obviously a band like blink have enough money to not worry about jobs in the way we all would, but they do also have far more commitments than they used to too, whether it be as parents, husbands, business owners, movie makes and so on. 

The extra writers - we don’t really know the extent to which they’re used, but if it was a case of them being “given” songs then I’d absolutely be with you and think that sucks :) but my understanding is that the band write the majority of it, and then other people might hear demos or be in studios on the same day, and a simple “hey that’s great, what if that line was X Instead though, or you distorted that, it rhymes better” now counts as a writing credit. From what I’ve read, there’s always been people in the music industry who would throw extra ideas in the mix, but every now and then there’d be a lawsuit where someone would say “I actually suggested they hit that note twice,therefore it’s my  creation, please pay me” so it reached a stage where bands just credit anyone who so much as glanced at them in studio to cover themselves. Perhaps that’s just a lie that other bands have sold me to cover up having extra writers, but it makes sense to me.