Shadow Monster is an angsty and loud two-piece from Bushwick, Brooklyn. Gillian Visco’s gritty, dissonant and desperate guitar riffs meet with John Swanson’s epic and explosive drumming style to form a raw and moody version of grunge rock. Lyrically, Shadow Monster explores themes of loss, depression and isolation. If you’re into Elliott Smith, Weakened Friends, Helium, and Kills Birds, your ears are going to love Shadow Monster.
Their new video “Kill Me Sweetie,” is the final release from their LP “Punching Bag,” which is an artful masterpiece from start to finish. Shadow Monsters sound is vibrant, captivating and bold as they bring a vision to the table that is truly their own. It’s hypnotic and smooth, yet raw, vibrant and dark. They bring the best of all worlds. The video perfectly encapsulates the essence of the duo, and goes above and beyond to impress your ears. We step inside of the video with Shadow Monster as they take us through the journey and process.
Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically?
Kill Me Sweetie is a song about going through the motions when everything you see makes you shake your head. It’s when you reach that point of being so over-it that you feel nothing. One day I was listening to the album mixes on the train and this song came on while I was going over the Williamsburg Bridge and I watched all the different lives passing as I remained in place, detached, and it was then that the seed was planted for a music video. At the time we already knew Punching Bag would be the first single so I just kept the idea on the backburner.
What was the inspiration behind this video(visuals, storyline, etc.)?
The vision for the music video was birthed from the lyric “…we’ll laugh and pat each other’s backs and walk back home to nothing.” The color palette and fly-on -the-wall feeling the one-shot provides, were an attempt to capture that window of time where late night bleeds into early morning, when the good-time buzz wears off and reality starts to resurface. And the dance is an interpretation of that walk home, catching the sunrise over the city when you feel completely alone in the world, a final exhale after holding it together for so long.
What was the process of making this video?
My friend Cade Weidenhaft and I had discussed doing a music video together, so we met a few times over zoom (as this was shot in 2020) and mapped the whole thing out. I brought up the idea of a one-shot video and he was just as excited as I was by it. We discussed time stamps beforehand, and knew exactly where we had to be during pivotal moments in the song . We shot six takes over two hours on an early November morning while the sun was coming up. I don’t think a one-shot video would have been possible without Cade’s enthusiasm and commitment to make it work. It also helped that Cade’s friend and collaborator Sean Hart showed up to set so we had an extra set of hands and eyes to guide Cade while shooting.Open document settingsOpen publish panel
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Shadow Monster is an angsty and loud two-piece from Bushwick, Brooklyn. Gillian Visco’s gritty, dissonant and desperate guitar riffs meet with John Swanson’s epic and explosive drumming style to form a raw and moody version of grunge rock. Lyrically, Shadow Monster explores themes of loss, depression and isolation. If you’re into Elliott Smith, Weakened Friends, Helium, and Kills Birds, your ears are going to love Shadow Monster. Their new video “Kill Me Sweetie,” is the final release from their LP “Punching Bag,” which is an artful masterpiece from start to finish. Shadow Monsters sound is vibrant, captivating and bold as they bring a vision to the table that is truly their own. It’s hypnotic and smooth, yet raw, vibrant and dark. They bring the best of all worlds. The video perfectly encapsulates the essence of the duo, and goes above and beyond to impress your ears.
We step inside of the video with Shadow Monster
Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically?
Kill Me Sweetie is a song about going through the motions when everything you see makes you shake your head. It’s when you reach that point of being so over-it that you feel nothing. One day I was listening to the album mixes on the train and this song came on while I was going over the Williamsburg Bridge and I watched all the different lives passing as I remained in place, detached, and it was then that the seed was planted for a music video. At the time we already knew Punching Bag would be the first single so I just kept the idea on the backburner.
What was the inspiration behind this video(visuals, storyline, etc.)?
The vision for the music video was birthed from the lyric “…we’ll laugh and pat each other’s backs and walk back home to nothing.” The color palette and fly-on -the-wall feeling the one-shot provides, were an attempt to capture that window of time where late night bleeds into early morning, when the good-time buzz wears off and reality starts to resurface. And the dance is an interpretation of that walk home, catching the sunrise over the city when you feel completely alone in the world, a final exhale after holding it together for so long.
What was the process of making this video?
My friend Cade Weidenhaft and I had discussed doing a music video together, so we met a few times over zoom (as this was shot in 2020) and mapped the whole thing out. I brought up the idea of a one-shot video and he was just as excited as I was by it. We discussed time stamps beforehand, and knew exactly where we had to be during pivotal moments in the song . We shot six takes over two hours on an early November morning while the sun was coming up. I don’t think a one-shot video would have been possible without Cade’s enthusiasm and commitment to make it work. It also helped that Cade’s friend and collaborator Sean Hart showed up to set so we had an extra set of hands and eyes to guide Cade while shooting.
Find the group via:
http://www.theshadowmonster.com/
https://shadowmonster.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/shadowmonster/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/60w1ZpD1LXnp3DKgB56DSz
Modern Mystery 