Mindless Hope is a Progressive Instrumental Guitar Metal band from Morrisville, Pennsylvania. The band was formed on August 30, 2009 by Lead Guitarist Matt Grosse, Bassist Tom Dilliplane, and Rhythm/Lead Guitarist James Rivera.
Matt had already started writing and recording songs for this project in late June 2009 while in Rim Rock, Arizona. He had already written the songs "Trepidation", "I'm Sorry for Believing", and "An Amazing Night" in early 2003 and 2004 while he was with his first band Soul Existence in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. He decided to revamp the first two songs by adding lead work and by redoing the structure of "Trepidation".
By the time Tom and James were in the fold, Matt had those three songs plus the first of many to be partly written by Tom Dilliplane, recorded as demos. The first of those songs was "The Antikythera Mechanism". Once that one was completed, Tom and Matt quickly composed, "No Pressure", "What's Left", and "The Hornets' Revenge" in a matter of a week.
In late November 2009, almost the entire first album had been written and the three were looking for a third guitarist and a drummer to complete the band.
Around that same time, a friend of James, and now a good friend of the band, Alex Wildgust, tried out to be the drummer. He told us of his good friend Justin Brown who was a guitarist whom he would jam with in their home town of Media, PA. Alex asked him if he would be interested in trying out for the band as well. He said yes based on what he heard on our demo at the time. The next week, the both of them drove down to try out for their respective positions. Matt, Tom, and James were immediately impressed with how quickly Justin learned "Trepidation", and that same night they told him if he wanted to be the main rhythm guitarist, the position was his. Unfortunately the same night they had to tell Alex the complete opposite. Thankfully Alex took the news well and is still good friends with the members of the band. From that night on, the four members practiced diligently every week to get as tight as possible til they found a drummer who fit the fold. They practiced with drum tracks that were done by Matt with a keyboard along with the songs that were written at the time. This went on til around mid March 2010 when Matt received a phone call telling him of a drummer who wanted to try out for the band. His name was William Lohr.
William showed up that first day and all of the members immediately clicked as a group. All that was needed was the official tryout to see if he was what they were looking for in a drummer. They decided to give him two weeks to learn whichever song he wanted to tryout with. Within the first week, he told Matt he was ready. He had decided to learn "Trepidation" first. So the very next weekend after meeting him, they had the tryout in Williams' basement. It went so well that he was immediately told that if he wanted the position, that it was his. He graciously said yes. This basement would be the main practice area where the band would prepare for playing shows. This is also where almost all of the recording was done for their first album entitled "Verbatim".
The spring of 2012 looks to be a new chapter in the bands history with the completion of their first album "Verbatim". They have gone through much adversity to finally be able to show everyone the first of 3 albums written in the past 3 years.
Mindless Hope is currently planning a summer/fall regional tour in anticipation of the release of their debut album.