The Almost

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The Almost is a American rock band from Clearwater, Florida, formed in 2005, and is most notable for being the side project of Underoath drummer Aaron Gillespie.

History

There is no definitive date as to when Aaron Gillespie started The Almost. He made a music space for The Almost on October 1, 2005 before he had released any of the songs to the public.

On October 4, 2005, he released two of his songs which were the demos for "I Mostly Like to Copy Other People" and "They Say You Can Never Write I Told You So in a Song But Here I Go".

Aaron worked with Kenny Vasoli to record a song called "Yule Be Sorry" for Happy Christmas Volume 4 on Tooth & Nail Records. It was in stores on October 25, 2005.

Gillespie wrote all of the songs himself while recording Define the Great Line with Underoath.

In 2007, the band embarked on Paramore's headlining tour, RIOT!, alongside The Starting Line and Set Your Goals (who played for the first half of the tour.)

In addition, according to their MySpace, The Almost went on tour with Emery, Envy On The Coast, Army of Me for all of June and parts of July. In May they also released the B-side song 'Hold On', which was originally only available as a bonus track on iTunes.

Shortly after the announcement of their new EP, drummer Kenny Bozich, quit the band. It was announced sometime in November via their MySpace. Dusty Redmon (the band's guitarist), made this statement in the AbsolutePunk.net forum: "Kenny quit. He's getting married and didn't want to tour at all. It happens..it's happened to me twice with beloved and dead poetic. It's a personal choice and we're cool with it. He was going to be playing drums on the next record, but made the choice to not be in a band at this point in his life. No big deal." The Almost will play at Soundwave 2010 with bands such as HIM, Whitechapel, A Day To Remember, Paramore and others.

Southern Weather (2007)

Their debut record, Southern Weather, was released on^[2] April 3, 2007, and was recorded in February and March 2006. The first single, "Say This Sooner", can be heard at The Almost's PureVolume and MySpace pages, along with "I Mostly Copy Other People" and the demo version of "Never Say I Told You So" (originally named "They Say You Can Never Write I Told You So in a Song But Here I Go"). Aaron recorded every instrument on the album, except for bass on a couple of tracks, with which Kenny Vasoli from The Starting Line helped.

The Almost released their first video for "Say This Sooner" on March 19, 2007. The video premiered on MTV2's UNLEASHED, which ran all day long on the hour. The video is also available on MTV2's website.

The Almost embarked on the "It's All Happening" tour from December 17 to January 20, 2006, joined by Jay Vilardi (guitar), Dusty Redmon (guitar), Alex Aponte (bass) and Kenny Bozich (drums). The tour showcased new songs from the upcoming recording of Southern Weather.

Since The Almost has formed, the band has reached over 11,000,000 plays on their MySpace music page and the band's song "Say This Sooner" has reached number one most played on all of PureVolume.

A video has been made for the second single Southern Weather. It can be seen on the band's Myspace.

No Gift to Bring EP (November 2008)

The Almost released a new EP titled "No Gift to Bring" on November 24 2008.They were originally going to release it on November 25 2008 but they changed the date to the day before. It is to tide fans over until the release of their new album in the summer/fall of 2009.^[3] It includes a new song titled "Awful Direction", a cover of the Christmas carol, "Little Drummer Boy", a cover of "Your Love Is Extravagant", a new version of "Amazing, Because It Is", and an exclusive mix of "Dirty and Left Out". The EP is almost entirely recorded by Aaron, and it is produced by Underoath guitarist Tim McTague, who also created the remix of "Dirty and Left Out."^[4]

Monster Monster (2009 onward)

In May 2008, founder and frontman of The Almost, Aaron Gillespie, announced that The Almost would be entering the studio in the winter of 2008 to record their follow-up album to Southern Weather. In the November 2008 Tooth And Nail podcast, Aaron stated "the new album will be more of a complete band effort", suggesting the whole band will be involved in the recording process.The band went into the studio at the beginning of May, recording in Nashville TN. The album titled Monster Monster was released through Tooth and Nail/Virgin on November 3, 2009, the single "Hands" was the first single from the album. However a music video for "Lonely Wheel" has already been released.

There are several bonus tracks for this album. Users that downloaded "Monster Monster" off of iTunes received the bonus track "Me And Alone." The fan pack version of the album sold exclusively at Best Buy contains the tracks "West" and "Wrong". The Monster EP contains 2 additional bonus tracks entitled "July" and "Birmingham" The album charted at #67 on the Billboard 200 and #3 on The Christian Album Charts. ^[5]

In February 2010, The Almost will play the Australian Soundwave Festival. The Almost will tour across Australia nationally playing alongside the three festival headliners; Faith No More, My Chemical Romance and Jane's Addiction, as well as other bands such as Paramore, All Time Low, The Devil Wears Prada, A Day To Remember, Escape The Fate, Enter Shikari, Meshuggah, Anthrax, Trivium, Whitechapel, Set Your Goals and other alternative, rock, metalcore and hardcore bands.

Band members

• Aaron Gillespie – lead vocals, guitar, keyboard, percussion
• Dusty Redmon – guitar (Ex-Beloved)
• Jay Vilardi – guitar, background vocals
• Alex Aponte – bass guitar
• Joe Musten - drums (Advent, Ex-Beloved)
• Matthew Schwartz - live keys, percussion and background vocals

Discography

Demos

Singles

Music videos

External links

• Official website

References