Montrose | Monster Under The Bed | Artwork Feature

“We started to build a fan base with our original pop-punk sound and we haven't lost that completely, but we've just tried to and add an edge to our songs,” states Jason Bishop, frontman of Bath’s Montrose: “We don't want to just be another pop punk band; as much as we all love the genre and it's current resurgence, we wanted to make ourselves stand out.” Though Monster Under The Bed is still bristling with the kind of infectious vocal hooks most commonly brewed in the pop punk gene cauldron, it’s also laden with bursts of staccato, punchy guitar that wouldn’t be lost amongst the early output of the likes of Four Year Strong, Funeral For A Friend or Thrice, where riffs and memorable melody collided with kinetic synergy. Here Jason talks us through the creation of the artwork that accompanies this offering… 

In regards to the creation of our artwork, we saw a guy named MarkBell post in the UK Pop Punk group on Facebook, as he was looking for bands to do work for. After checking out his portfolio of previous work for a bunch of other bands, for both CD and merch designs, we knew we had to get him in to do our EP cover.

We basically allowed him to have as much creative freedom as he wanted, as a former graphic designer I know how much this can help certain artists get their best results!

The general idea and theme of the EP itself is around the idea of having "monsters" under your bed, and how as a kid you're kept awake at night by the thoughts of monsters coming to get you. As you get older these 'monsters' just become our real life worries that keep us up at night, and that's what each song on the EP is about.

With that in mind, we had a chat with Mark and told him exactly that, and he was stoked to be able to play around with the idea. As you can see, what we got what obviously a literal interpretation of the idea and we couldn't be happier with it. He's done a great job, and I seriously recommend him to any bands, brands or companies that are after artwork! 

Monsters Under The Bed is released June 15th! Check out the video for Underperformer below:

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