TAKING BACK SUNDAY **

Taking Back Sunday is an American rock band from Amityville, Long Island, New York, formed in 1999 by Eddie Reyes. The current members are lead vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist/vocalist John Nolan, guitarist Eddie Reyes, bassist Shaun Cooper, and drummer Mark O'Connell.

The band has released four studio albums, with their most successful being Louder Now (2006) which has sold over 900,000 copies and peaked at #2 on the United States' Billboard 200, closely followed by Where You Want to Be which peaked at #3 in 2004. They have also had twelve singles, one extended play, two live albums and a compilation album. "MakeDamnSure" is their highest charting single to date, peaking at #8 on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart in 2006 and #48 on the Billboard Hot 100.

On June 28th, 2011 the band will release the follow-up to New Again with the original Tell All Your Friendseponymous album Taking Back Sunday line-up with their

History

Early years (1999–2002)

Taking Back Sunday was founded in 1999 by Eddie Reyes. Reyes was already a veteran of the music scene on Long Island, and took part in numerous seminal projects. Mind Over Matter, a hardcore outfit, influenced Screamo and Post Hardcore bands like Thursday and Glassjaw; bands that would shape the face of Post Hardcore music for years to come. Inside, another band that Reyes was a part of was one of the most influential indie emo bands on Long Island. Their sound was similar to that of Mineral and Sunny Day Real Estate. Reyes also founded The Movielife, a Melodic Hardcore band that gained much fame in the underground and eventual mainstream music scenes.

When choosing members for the band, Reyes approached Jesse Lacey, whose band The Rookie Lot had just broken up, to play guitar and sing. Jesse brought in John Nolan on guitar and vocals, and Jesse switched to bass. Antonio Longo, who had been in the band One True Thing was recruited to sing. The band played a few local venues while going through different band names, before settling on "Taking Back Sunday", a name of a song from the bands' friends, The Waiting Process. Derrick Sherman from The Reunion Show was in the band. In interviews, while the band was first getting recognition for their material, they frequently told interviewers that the name of the band was a reference to a Smith's single that was a b-side to "How Soon is Now?".

While recording their first six track EP, Jesse Lacey left the band to form Brand New with Brian Lane, the drummer of The Rookie Lot. Then, John Nolan half jokingly asked his friend, Adam Lazzara from North Carolina if he would move to Long Island and play bass for the band. Within the next week, Adam had moved in with John in Bellmore and was the full time bassist. Adam worked at Eddie Reyes' father's deli for pay.

With the new members, the five piece finished the Taking Back Sunday EP. However, after an argument between Antonio Longo and Eddie Reyes, the band decided that another lineup change was needed. Adam Lazzara was moved to lead vocals, at Eddie's behest, and Shaun Cooper was brought in on bass. The band began writing new material and recorded a demo, which was put out through Levittown's own Miscellaneous Records. The first song the band wrote under the new lineup was, "Great Romances of the 20th Century". The band has stated since that the way their writing process works, is that someone comes up with a "riff" and everyone else adds onto it and perfects the song around it. And once the instrumentals were complete, John and Lazzara would take lines from their notebooks and put them together for the song's lyrics. The demo was called both the Taking Back Sunday Demo and the Tell All Your Friends Demo, both included different album art. The band began to tour relentlessly with bands like Brand New, The Reunion Show, Rival Schools, The Rainboy Case, and others before speaking to labels.

In 2001, their good friend Christian Winters from Hi-Lo Films filmed a video for the demo version of "Great Romances of the 20th Century". When the band was finally signed to Victory Records, the band showed them the video, they loved it, and Christian went back to re-edit it to the album version of the song.

Independent success (2002–2005)

Following Adam Lazzara's replacement of Longo as lead vocalist, the band released their first full album Tell All Your Friends, on Victory Records in 2002. Tell All Your Friends gave the band a small taste of success in the alternative rock spotlight, thanks to the singles "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)", "Great Romances of the 20th Century", and "You're So Last Summer". The latter song gained popularity with a music video featuring rapper Flavor Flav.

The album cover is a picture of an interstate off-ramp, with an overlay of the album title and the numbers "152", signifying the exit where the band members met their friends. The number has appeared on every LP cover to date.

In 2003, guitarist/vocalist John Nolan and bassist Shaun Cooper left the band to form Straylight Run. The loss of Nolan and Cooper put the already unstable band into a state of heightened tension. However, Taking Back Sunday added Fred Mascherino on guitar and vocals as well as Matt Rubano on bass.

The year of 2004 proved to be successful for Taking Back Sunday, with the band opening for Blink-182 and appearing on the Vans Warped Tour. In addition, their second album, Where You Want To Be, was released on July 27, 2004, on Victory Records. Although sounding slightly different from Tell All Your Friends, the new album managed to do well commercially. Propelled by the single A Decade Under the Influence, Where You Want To Be went on to debut at the #3 spot on the Billboard 200 albums chart, with around 163,000 copies sold.

Taking Back Sunday received even more mainstream exposure by appearing on late night talk shows Jimmy Kimmel Live!; Loveline, which Adam hosted; as well as contributing the song This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know) to the soundtrack for Spider-Man 2. They also contributed the song Your Own DisasterError Operator to both the Fantastic 4 soundtrack and its video game tie-in, where it served as Mr. Fantastic's theme. An instrumental version is also used as background music in the game. In 2007, the band contributed the song What's It Feel Like to Be a Ghost? to the soundtrack for Transformers, although the song did not appear in the movie. Also, the band was featured in the Tony Hawk's American Wasteland soundtrack when they covered the Descendents songs "Suburban Home" and "I Like Food" together as a medley. to the Elektra soundtrack, and

Major label debut (2006–2007)

On April 25, 2006, Taking Back Sunday released their third album, entitled Louder Now, on Warner Bros. Records. The members' comments on the album reflected the dramatic change the band had undergone in the two years since their last release. Adam stated that fans seemed to feel their live shows had more energy than their recordings, and that Louder Now brought more of that across. Louder Now draws its name from the opening track "What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?". In fact, all of Taking Back Sunday's full-length albums got their names from lyrics from songs featured on the album during a point where the titles hadn't been decided yet. Tell All Your Friends derived its name from "Cute Without The E (Cut From The Team)," and Where You Want To Be from "Set phasers To Stun." New Again was the first LP from Taking Back Sunday to feature a title track.

Taking Back Sunday received mainstream exposure by appearing on the late night talk shows The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien, as well as the teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation in an episode entitled What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?.

In December 2006, the band released its first CD/DVD documentary, Louder Now: PartOne, featuring behind-the-scenes tour footage and four live concerts. Following months of touring to support Louder Now, Taking Back Sunday appeared in the American leg of Live Earth on July 7, 2007. During the summer of 2007, Taking Back Sunday was also a part of Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution tour, along with My Chemical Romance, HIM, and several other bands.

On October 30, 2006, the band's former record label, Victory Records, released Notes From The Past, which featured four songs from Tell All Your Friends, six songs from Where You Want To Be, and two B-sides: The Ballad of Sal Villanueva and Your Own Disaster ('04 mix). The band then released Louder Now: Part Two on November 20, 2007, a DVD of unreleased live concert footage from their show at Long Beach Arena in Long Beach, California, which included special features such as the video for "Twenty-Twenty Surgery", made to be released in Europe. The DVD was packaged with a companion CD featuring eight live tracks, two B-sides that were previously unreleased in America, and a special "Twelve Days of Christmas" track.

Departure of Fred Mascherino and New Again (2007–2010)

In October 2007 the band announced that Taking Back Sunday and guitarist Fred Mascherino would be parting ways, which came after he decided to focus on his then upcoming solo album with The Color Fred. He was later replaced by Matthew Fazzi, who would provide guitar and backing vocals. Mascherino went on to reveal in later interviews: "There were just problems between the five of us about writing, who was going to do it and how we were going to do it, we weren't being very productive because we were fighting too much about that stuff. The band was more about cooking food than making music." This statement inspired the band to write the track "Capital M-E", which features lyrical references to Mascherino's departure and the comments he made afterward. In 2010, Fred Mascherino posted a picture of himself and Adam Lazzara via twitter with the caption, "Today was a good day" indicating that he and Lazzara have since made up and are on good terms again. 

On November 6, 2008, Taking Back Sunday revealed in Rolling Stone that their fourth studio album was to be titled New Again and would feature the tracks "Winter Passing", "Lonely Lonely", "Catholic Knees", and "Carpathia". They stated that "Winter Passing" was "...a slow dance like the last song at your 8th grade dance [that] moves more like an R&B tune than a rock and roll song", and that "Carpathia" will include the first bass solos in any Taking Back Sunday song. They also commented that "Catholic Knees" is "one of the heavier songs we've ever written", and that "Lonely Lonely" is "relentless – two and a half minutes of punching you in the face". In the build-up to the release of New Again, the band released a number of tracks—the first of which was "Carpathia"--on December 21, 2008 as free digital downloads to those who purchased the band's Christmas holiday set, with a physical limited vinyl release of the track as well as a live version of "Catholic Knees" released on April 18, 2009, secondly title track "New Again" as a free single download from the band's website on April 16, 2009, followed by the first full single "Sink Into Me", released on April 20, 2009, premiering on BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe show, and being made available digitally short after. On May 16, 2009, "Everything Must Go" was released to stream on the band's MySpace. Every Monday, the band released a new song on their MySpace from New Again labeling it "New Music Monday".

During their tour supporting New Again, the band played in Dublin, Ireland where guitarist Matt Fazzi fractured his foot. Despite this, the show in Belfast, Northern Ireland went on and the rest of the tour was completed, which included stops in the UK at Sonisphere Festival and the Kerrang! awards show.

On August 18, 2009, the band released a digital live album entitled Live from Bamboozle '09. The album consists of 13 live tracks recorded at The Bamboozle, where they played in May of the same year.

In September 2009, the band announced they will be co-headlining with The All-American Rejects and Anberlin for a full U.S tour. They are also set to release a live acoustic DVD around spring 2010 following the tour.

On February 12, 2010, the band released a previously unreleased b-side from New Again, entitled "Winter Passing", on their official website.

Throughout February and March the band played the Australian Soundwave tour, playing songs from various albums to crowds of almost 30 000.

Reunion of Tell All Your Friends line-up and fifth studio album (2010–present)

On March 29, 2010, Matt Rubano and Matthew Fazzi announced that they were no longer members of Taking Back Sunday. The band's official website also posted a picture of the original line-up with the members' eyes crossed out, indicating a possible reunion of the Tell All Your Friends era lineup.

On March 30, 2010 Eddie Reyes did an interview with 103.9 WRCN and confirmed a line-up change; however, he did not confirm the new members. He also mentioned the band's intentions of recording soon.

On March 31, 2010, tbsnewagain tweeted a link to a video announcing the new lineup of the band. The video ended with a quick stream of words which ended with, "Sometimes it takes some time to remember where you were headed in the first place and the people you intended to go there with. There's no hard feelings, just the future."

On April 12, the band made an official announcement confirming John Nolan and Shaun Cooper have re-joined the band. It was announced that they will soon begin the recording process of their fifth studio album with Louder Now producer Eric Valentine. On the same day, Adam Lazzara did an interview with Alternative Press, in which he discussed how the original line-up got back together and how both Matt Rubano and Matt Fazzi were not fired, but rather "let go".

The band has recently finished writing in El Paso with around 15 songs completed, according to Mark O'Connell's Twitter. Pre-production on the new album began on August 17, 2010, the same day their live acoustic album Live from Orensanz was released.

Recent updates from the band's Twitter account have stated that the band has tracked O'Connell's drums, Cooper's bass, and Reyes's guitar parts. Several song titles from the upcoming record were revealed in an interview with Spin Magazine; the working titles include "Sad Saviour", "You Were Right", "Don't Lose Faith in Me", "The Best Places to be a Mom", and "Money". Adam Lazzara stated that one of their new songs, "El Paso", is "probably the heaviest rock song we've ever written." 

A demo version of "The Best Places to be a Mom" was released by Adam Lazzara on November 16, 2010. The band announced that they are almost finished recording their new record, and that it can be expected in early 2011.

On December 20, 2010, the band put out a new christmas song entitled "Merry Christmas I Missed You So Much".

On January 10, 2011 the band announced that recording had been finished, and that the album is now in the final stages of mixing. Eddie revealed in a tweet on March 3, 2011, that there would be 11 songs on the new album, and that 10 of the 11 songs were done being mixed. On March 7, 2011, the band announced a UK tour in May 2011, in support of the album.

On March 10, 2011, the band announced that their fifth album was finished being mastered and that a release date for the album would follow soon. On March 28, 2011, The band's Youtube channel was updated with a brand new song entitled "El Paso". In the lyric video, it also states that the album will be eponymous and will be released in the summer of 2011.

On March 30, 2011, Keagan Ilvonen of Absolutepunk.net confirmed that the release date of the eponymous album would be on June 28, 2011. Adam Lazzara confirmed via Twitter that the cover art for the new album would be done by Brad Filip.

On April 6, 2011, the band played at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey, to record footage for an upcoming video for the song "El Paso". Adam Lazzara requested that the audience put away their phones and cameras during the recording. They played the song three times during the set.  During this performance, the band also debuted a new song entitled "Faith", live for the first time.

On April 13, 2011, the band revealed the album's tracklist and artwork, as well as offering a pre-order for a special limited edition which also includes a bonus disc with six demo songs, individual song posters and copies of handwritten lyrics by Adam Lazzara.

On April 30, 2011, the band headlined Bamboozle 2011, where they played their first album, Tell All Your Friends, in its entirety. 

On May 6, 2011, the band announced that they would have to reschedule their UK tour due to unavoidable scheduling conflict.