Insulin Shock

Insulin Shock
Origin	New York City, NY
Genres	Indie rock, indie pop, folk
Years active	2006-2013, 2024
Labels	Dirge
Past members	Mathew Poole, David Shookz, Dave Smithun, Marty Pallor, Barry Mcferrel, Sarah Park (former)

Insulin Shock was a semi-uncontroversial Indie Rock band which formed in Staten Island, New York in 2006. Insulin Shock gained some minor notoriety after their 2008 debut album, Type One, drew the ire of the American Diabetes Association. Their second album, Type Two, was delayed for years due to creative and personal clashes between founding members Matthew Poole and Sarah Park, their lead singer. After much anticipation, Type Two was released on September 12th, 2012. However, it was lambasted by critics and fans alike for abandoning the "raw, mercurial energy" of their first album in favor of a more polished sound. The negative reception from Type Two led to Insulin Shock being ignominiously dropped from their label, and the group disbanded soon after.

They attempted a revival in 2024, following resurgence in interest sparked by a passing TikTok trend, although they again disbanded just before their first reunion performance at St. George Theatre.

History

High School

Insulin Shock, originally named "Rosengarten zu Worms" (a reference to something presumably very obscure and heady), was formed by childhood friends Matthew Poole, who played rhythm guitar; David Shookz, on the keys; Marty Pallor, on bass; and Sarah M. Park, singing lead. With the exception of Pallor, who was intermittently attending community college classes at CSI Willowbrook, they were all juniors at New Dorp High School.

Poole, Shookz, and Pallor would meet to play music in Pallor's two-bedroom apartment. Park, who was Pallor's girlfriend at the time, quickly became their lead vocalist, as she was the only girl they knew. Poole was inspired by the musical stylings of indie mainstays like The Fiery Furnaces, The Wrens, and Beirut. The album Gulag Orkestar was a particularly major influence on Poole's attempts at music. Park, on the other hand, preferred songs from bands like Paramore, Flyleaf, Underoath, and The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.

Despite their differences in taste, Poole and Park became close and began taking music seriously as a career after graduating from high school. They, along with Shookz and Pallor, started recording Type One while working at a CVS.

Type One (2008)

The "recording sessions" for Type One were notable for their complete lack of cohesion. Parts were recorded on tape, flip phones, laptop mics, and often in different tempos and key signatures. Poole strove for an eclectic, meticulous folk sound characterized by experimentation with unique instruments like musical saws, kalimbas, and, most concerning of all, a bassoon. Park was often unable to meet in person due to studying at NYU Tisch, so she would write songs and then record her vocals to tape on an RCA shoebox recorder, sending the tapes to Shookz and Pallor, along with lengthy written notes on how the drums, guitar parts, and bass lines were supposed to sound—notes that Shookz and Pallor would almost universally ignore.

Shookz would then create the backing tracks on a pirated copy of Fruity Loops using the default instruments, and Pallor would play the 1 and occasionally the 5 note of the key they might have been on. The few times they would meet to record in Pallor's apartment more often led to screaming matches about the nature of life, authenticity, and other sophomoric drivel, rather than finished music.

Although they had some minor success booking gigs in various community theaters, basements, and heroin dens around town, their differing schedules and utter lack of discipline meant they often went weeks without meeting in person. Critics have called them a forerunner of the remote Zoom-call bands that sprang up during COVID-19, although (at the time) local artists derided Insulin Shock for not having earned their bona fides once they reached semi-mainstream success.

Semi-mainstream success

Due to an error in Apple servers, the album Type One was accidentally downloaded to every iTunes user account on the East Coast. Most people quickly deleted the album, with some users frantically calling Apple support to report a virus in their iPods. However, this incident caught the attention of indie record label owner Peter Donoghue. Donoghue became enamored with the band's sound, which he described as a "revelation" and "stretching the boundaries of what 'organized sound' means, in an ontological sense." Insulin Shock was signed to Donoghue's label, Dirge Records, soon after.

Insulin Shock first performed to a reasonably sized audience at Kankfest 2009 in Manchester, Tennessee, opening for a local close-up card magician whose name has been lost to time. The band rose in popularity, to the point that Type One became the 26th most downloaded album in the iTunes Alternative category for the week of August 16th-22nd, 2009. The 4th track, "The Suddenness of What Appears to Be/e", became a sleeper hit and as of 2025, the band's only song to top 10M streams on Spotify.

American Diabetes Association controversy

The American Diabetes Association released a statement on September 17th, 2009, decrying what it called "highly offensive stereotypes" found within the song "The Suddenness of What Appears to Be/e," particularly the lyrics: "So I binge on unknown merits / Just to purge my unborn shame / Sits your sweetness, my obsession / And I'm nothing but to blame." The ADA interpreted the lyrics as blaming sufferers of Type 1 Diabetes for their own condition, due to bingeing on too many sweets. The ADA also claimed that naming a musical group after a potentially life-threatening condition, insulin shock, was highly offensive, and called on the band to rename themselves immediately.

Poole saw the statement as an opportunity to promote the band as a defender of creative expression against the stifling governmental forces of censorship, unaware that the ADA was a private organization. He wrote several Tweets to that effect, which were liked and retweeted over 40 times. Park's reaction was more subdued. Pallor had by that time been replaced by bassist Dave Smithun, who was pre-diabetic. Smithun stated that the lyrics written by Park were "basically nonsense" and that, as a potential future sufferer of Diabetes, he and the band had a right to comment on the condition, and to keep their "offensive" name.

The controversy quickly fizzled out within a month, after the ADA couldn't find anyone to picket their performances.

Type Two (2012)

This hurdy-gurdy had become a tragic victim of Mid-Atlantic barometric pressure changes

Anticipation for Insulin Shock's planned sophomore album was high, and so was the pressure. Now with the resources of a midsized label behind him, Poole's compulsion to experiment with esoteric instruments, at the expense of musical cohesion, spiraled out of control. For the recording of Type Two, Poole spent hours playing and tuning zithers, erhus, crwths, gadulkas and other instruments in the hopes of replicating the sound they achieved in the demo. Poole fell deep into debt when an 18th Century hurdy-gurdy, loaned to him from a museum in Bristol, exploded in transit due to changes in humidity. Shookz and the engineers at Backroom Studios ended up replacing all of Poole's out-of-tempo recordings with VSTs and samples.

The strain of touring and an undiagnosed eating disorder led to difficulties when recording Park's vocals. Poole would castigate Park for her inconsistent vocal takes and lack of enthusiasm, and Park would call Poole a "whiny, effete loser with the aesthetic tastes of a tiny bug living inside an afghan rug." Shookz and Smithun would hide in the bathroom during these arguments.

The producer for Type Two, Mel Donoghue (no relation to Peter Donoghue), made significant cuts to each of the songs in the album, turning 6-7 minutes of what he considered overindulgent excess into tight, 3-5 minute pieces. Mel Donoghue allowed for one 8-minute song but otherwise, Poole's experimentation was reined in severely, much to his chagrin. The only exception to this rule was in Dave Smithun's bass lines: he, unlike Pallor, could play the 3 note of the key.

The release of Type Two was followed by a severe backlash from the band's most ardent fans. Reviewers and bloggers decried the album's "stale, corporatized" vibe. Type Two lacked the unpolished, raw sound of lips smacking, strings buzzing due to amp feedback, AC units running in the distance, the distant coughing of neighbors or the faded screams of Marty Pallor's mother banging on the bedroom door. Type Two was far too polished, the lyrics too comprehensible, the tempo too regular. Gone was the rubato of instruments weaving in and out of tempo or the hard clipping of Shookz's virtual samples hammering the limiter like a clubbed seal. Gone were Park's pitchy growls and screams, replaced by a voice that was full-bodied, deeply expressive, and at times mellifluous, yet ultimately too conventional for listeners to stomach.

Following poor sales of the album, and allegations of impropriety by the producer towards Park, Insulin Shock was politely invited to exit Dirge Records. They continued to tour for a little while, but the lack of enthusiasm, no label backing, and abysmal ticket and merch sales made touring too expensive to break even, much less make a profit. Insulin Shock disbanded soon after.

Post-breakup music and failed revival

Matthew Poole and Sarah Park both went on to have reasonably successful solo careers, although neither reached the dizzying heights of their Insulin Shock days. Poole started a solo project under a familiar name, "Rosengarten zu Worms." He made a serious effort to learn the Theorbo, and frequently kicks off performances with period accurate Baroque pieces, before returning to his normal six-string guitar to pay the bills.

Park has released solo EPs under her own name. Additionally, she has been a guest vocalist for various YouTube cover channels; her most well-viewed video, a cover of The Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes" in a 6/8 folksy jazz shuffle, has a modest 837,000 views as of 2025.

David Shookz and Dave Smithun went on to form an EDM duo called 2DS, and are currently under investigation by the SEC due to a pump-and-dump scheme involving a novelty meme coin called SEMEN (SMN), which trades for $0.000005648 in the open market as of 2025.

Failed 2024 revival

Their song, "The Suddenness of What Appears to Be/e", became a semi-viral hit on TikTok, amassing enough views to again attract the attention of Dirge Records, now under new management following an acquisition by Belgian megacorp Fluxys. They approached the surviving members of Insulin Shock in hopes of coaxing them into reuniting, to take advantage of their newfound virality among the Zoomers. Strapped for cash, Poole, Park, Shookz and Smithun agreed.

Their reunion was short-lived, as disaster struck just hours before what would've been their first performance in 11 years. The gear truck holding the stage rigging equipment (and much of Poole's novelty string instruments) came to a stop under an overpass after its rear axle fell off due to disrepair. An entirely unrelated touring van (used by Contemporary-Christian rock band [REDACTED]) was parked at the top of the overpass, where their driver was illegally dumping the tour van's waste holding tank off to the side. The liquified fecal matter dripped onto the trailer roof, pockmarked with holes, and seeped into the equipment and much of the instruments.

When the gear truck arrived at the loading bay of St. George Theatre smelling of human sewage, Poole and Park saw this as a divine omen, telling them that Insulin Shock was best left in the past. As a final act of rebellion, or perhaps resignation, all surviving members of Insulin Shock left the venue, hours before what would've been the kickstart to their Reunion Tour.

Legacy

Featurettes and online BTS videos created to promote the 16 year anniversary re-issue of Type One have shed much more light on the musical development of the band, and its fraught history, much of which had been previously shrouded in obscurity. Footage from an aborted attempt at a "Reunion Tour Documentary"—which were leaked to the internet following a copyright dispute between the filmmakers and Dirge Records—have led to further interest in the band, and some minor calls for another revival attempt, although Poole and Park have been adamant that their Insulin Shock days are well behind them.

Matthew Poole, filmed just hours before the sewage incident, had this to say about the legacy of the band: "I think, we became famous at a really formative time in our lives, when we were still unsure of who we were and who we were meant to be, and that character, it comes across in the record [Type One]. There was a level of maturing we had to do for the second one, and people, I understand why, but people never came to terms with it. Ultimately, they wanted our indecision, but they didn't want us after we started to decide. We stopped being an empty vessel. That's a lot to think about."

Smithun put it simpler: "I think it's the name. Insulin Shock. There's only two types of diabetes. We could've never made a third, what would we call it? Gout? They should make a third type of Diabetes, so we can get back on our feet."

Band members

Former members

• Mathew Poole – rhythm guitar, backing vocals, musical saw, kalimba, bouzouki, bassoon, harmonica, assorted nonsense (2006–2013, 2024)
• Sarah Park – lead vocals, drums (2006–2013, 2024)
• David Shookz – keyboards, organ, piano, backing vocals, laptop (2006–2013, 2024)
• Marty Pallor – bass guitar, drums (attempted) (2006–2008)
• Dave Smithun – bass guitar, double bass (2008–2013, 2024)

Former touring members

• Barry Mcferrel – lead guitar, backing vocals, flugelhorn, trombone, euphonium (2011-2013, 2024)

Discography

• Type One (2008)
• Type Two (2012)
• Type One: 16 Year Anniversary [2024 Remaster] (2024)