The Battle of the Bands competition took place on February 22 at Cottonwood High School. Xavier Flowers, Zac Romney, Nikolai Winters, and Ben Larson are members of the band Almond Extract. These Skyline High School students participated in the district-wide competition. Many of the bands came from all around the valley to participate.
Almond Extract formed as a band around six months ago. They are an indie band formed straight out of Skyline High with music inspirations like The Backseat Lovers. Almond Extract is still starting out, but they have made progress. “I’m proud of how much we have done in such a short time,” Winters said. Despite this, all of the members of Almond Extract have known each other for a long time. “We live down the street from each other,” Larson said. When they decided to form the band, Almond Extract named themselves after one of the first songs they played together. According to Flowers, “It was a song name, but we didn’t have a good name for the band, so we just named it after that.”
They each have passion for their musical abilities and playing together. They have performed a handful of times, but they definitely have a favorite. “Battle of the Bands was epic, yeah,” Larson said. The SBOs were asked to find a band to participate and reached out to Almond Extract. “The PTA wanted a band from Skyline to play, and they chose us,” Romney said.
The principal of Skyline High School, Robert Mcdaniel, was the host for Battle of the Bands. He told many jokes, quizzed the audience on band facts, and gave away gift cards by a raffle. There were also professional judges watching the bands perform live. These judges chose three bands and three soloists to go to the multi-region competition taking place on March 15. Flowers, the lead singer, thought that the event was great and his favorite part was “all of the great people and the food.”
Even though they didn’t place, they were quite eager to play together even more. “I think we need to get better at state presence,” Flowers said. “We are Almond Extract.” They have an active Instagram page (@almondextract_) and a Spotify account that anyone can listen to their latest music on. The band has an average of 1.8k monthly listeners and their latest single “Water Boy.” Almond Extract is releasing an album and will be performing at Kilby Block Party 2025; what will be next?
