SAN DIEGO — There were no visible acts of magic performed during Blink-182’s sold-out, often triumphant homecoming concert Sunday night at Petco Park in downtown San Diego. No rabbits were pulled from hats. No one was sawed in half. No one was lowered upside down into a tank of water that was then padlocked and draped in black.

Even so, this Poway-bred pop-punk trio accomplished a feat that was as uncharacteristic as it was impressive. The usually raucous band — long noted for its brash, proudly juvenile lyrics and profane stage patter about sex and various bodily functions — concluded its 92-minute, 26-song concert with an introspective ballad about friendship, love and mortality.

Downbeat, vulnerable and unabashedly sentimental, “One More Time” is the title track of Blink’s 2023 album. It’s the group’s first since 2011 to feature guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge back in the fold after his 12-year hiatus from recording with the band.

The new album was released three years after bassist/vocalist Mark Hoppus was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma — and 16 years after drummer Travis Barker survived a fiery plane crash that killed four of the six passengers aboard. Each of these life-or-death experiences inspired the members of this now-32-year-old band to reunite after extended periods of estrangement, the latest of which saw DeLonge replaced by Matt Skiba from 2015 to 2022.

“It shouldn’t take a sickness, or airplanes falling out of the sky,” DeLonge sang to his two bandmates and the 40,000-plus audience at Petco Park. “Do I have to die to hear you miss me? Do I have to die to hear you say goodbye? I don’t want to act like there’s tomorrow/ I don’t want to wait to do this one more time.”

Pensive and understated, “One More Time” almost seemed to come from a different planet than most of the concert, including the four high-octane Blink favorites that immediately preceded it: “What’s My Age Again?”; “First Date”; “All the Small Things”; and “Dammit” (which playfully quoted the chorus from Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”).

Swift, incidentally, performed at Petco in 2015, about seven months after DeLonge’s departure from the band. The first Petco show by Blink, with Skiba on board, came in 2019 at an invitation-only Twitch.com convention.

Last year’s reunion of Blink with DeLonge, who replaced his own replacement to rejoin Hoppus and Barker, kicked off at the 2023 Coachella festival in Indio. It was followed by a tour that included two shows last summer at Pechanga Arena San Diego.

There was a “welcome-back” air of celebration at Blink’s Pechanga concerts. But it paled compared to the triumph of Sunday’s Petco performance, which was the sixth stop on Blink’s 2024 North American summer tour.

At Pechanga, Blink’s members were feeling their way back together. Hoppus was still regaining his voice after multiple rounds of chemotherapy, while Barker’s ferociously virtuosic drumming tended to dominate many songs, which was both a plus and a minus. The band’s Pechanga repertoire did not include “One More Time,” “Edging” or the four other songs from Blink’s latest album that were performed Sunday.

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