If you were a regular attendee of Boston-area gigs before the live music scene shut down earlier this year, you’ve almost certainly seen Shannon Donahue and Nicholas Wolf perform together at least once in local punk mainstay Leopard Print Taser, where they play bass and guitar, respectively. Since October 2019, Donahue and Wolf have expanded their output together by putting out EPs as a duo, under different band names to represent their distinct sounds. Sweetest Death, a darkwave/post-punk project, came first with the release of the single “Little Familiar” last year and EP When Dreams Were Nightmares in March, with the hardcore punk of Shame Container on a demo following shortly after in May.
The transition into these EPs came easily for the two. “Honestly, LPT always recorded either at our practice space or at our home,” Donahue says. “So, the two of us recording in our home together was just us going through the motions without our drummer or singer. If anything it’s much easier to record when no one has to travel to do so. And we both all of a sudden had a lot of extra time on our hands and the means to make some new music so we figured why the hell not?” Moving from there to Shame Container came after the experience of working on When Dreams Were Nightmares, as Wolf says, “I had gotten pretty comfortable programming drums and tracking guitars and synths… so when we started Shame Container it was very easy, particularly being that I come from a primarily metal/hardcore background.”
Speaking on how the distinction between genre on the two projects came about, Donahue says, “[With Sweetest Death] we wanted a John Carpenter soundtrack meets Quentin Tarantino soundtrack kind of spooky vibe with some synth. Shame Container is actually a child of the pandemic. I think we were both feeling a bit angrier and wanted to get it out of our systems. Plus as a singer I feel much more comfortable yelling rather than whatever the hell I did with Sweetest Death. Talking over music or something??”
Across these two EPs, Donahue and Wolf cover subjects such as depression (“Not So Boston”), sex work (“Financial Instability”), and — fittingly — living in the time of the coronavirus (“Inside”). “Not So Boston” is one of the more personal songs on these releases, chronicling the coldness and sadness and loneliness “despite being in my home city” during a particularly rough few months; of writing the lyrics, she says “those words just spilled right out my brain parts.”
As for what comes next for these projects, Donahue thinks anything is possible. Though “Sweetest Death was definitely more of an experiment,” she says she’d personally love to do a full-length release for Shame Container “hopefully SOME DAMN DAY having actual other members and being a full band!” And they haven’t ruled out expanding to even more genres: when asked if there were any other kinds of sounds they wanted to try out, Wolf mentions working on a death metal project called Severed Boy that he and Leopard Print Taser drummer Reid Calkin had “previously messed around with” after the breakup of their previous band Lunglust. “He’s in our pod,” Wolf says, “so it’s been great being able to play live with a drummer again.” Though Donahue doesn’t plan on contributing to that band as of this moment, she has her own dream project: “I really, REALLY want to start an ’80s dance rock, B-52’s, Devo-inspired type of band!” If their releases this year (and in Leopard Print Taser) are anything to go by, Shannon Donahue and Nicholas Wolf are well worth following no matter what type of music they play.
For more updates on everything Shannon and Nick do, follow Sweetest Death and Shame Container (as well as Leopard Print Taser) on Instagram and Bandcamp.