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Night of the living Maris
By Megan Carneal
mcarneal@mscd.edu

Photo by Jason Small • jsmall@mscd.edu Maris the Great hangs out with his zombie back-up dancers after his show Feb. 24 outside of the Marquis

Rock and roll is offensive. Rock and roll is dead – well, more like undead. And rock and roll is gay.

It started with a website, http://www.maristhegreat.com, where the already loose taboos in the music industry were completely broken. Bands who considered themselves tough were made to blush and then possibly be murdered by a zombie in a grotesque and titillating photo shoot.

“All of the mortals around the world have been brainwashed. They’ve been duped into listening and supporting music that is clearly inferior, made by mortals,” said Maris the Great, the “zombie” responsible for the website. The frontman is so adamant about maintaining his undead role that he never strays from his carefully constructed character, even for this interview.

Maris says his ultimate plan is to rid the world of any band that could possibly stand in the way of his own, Maris the Great and the Faggots of Death. Through his website he has interviewed, or “stalked,” hundreds of bands and has “killed” 33 of them in photo shoots. These gruesome photo shoots depict band members being horrifically murdered and sometimes consumed by Maris himself.

Hardcore band Comeback Kid was the tastiest, Maris said.

“Canadian flesh is just a little bit more spicy somehow. It has its own flavor,” he said.

From band name to website, Maris’ entire premise is flamboyantly offensive. But none of that can compare to the spectacle of sex and gore that is his live show. It’s rock and roll on a level rivaling G.G. Allen, but done with the kind of class only a drag queen can muster. Mass amounts of fake blood are flung around the stage, backup zombie dancers run through the crowd looking for victims, and pieces of real animal organs are thrown into the sadistically delighted audience.

Audience member David Ward was the ecstatic recipient of some real cow intestines at a Maris show on Feb. 24 at the Marquis Theater. He was so thrilled with his find he said he would take them home and keep them in a jar.

“I told Maris that at their next show I’m gonna wear it as a necklace,” Ward said.

His band consists of the lovely Faggoria, who hates rock and roll but likes the drying effect playing guitar has on her nails. As the band’s center of glamour, she is not as apt to join in the band’s bloody antics.

“I use a lot of Pepto-Bismol to get through the show,” she said.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the other guitarist, Faggoty Ann, who along with Maris epitomizes all that is vile. He plays slide guitar solos with a vibrator and by the end of the show has stained his dress with various bodily fluids.

The moody Miss Hissy Fit plays bass, while Penis Colada pumps out the percussion on drums. Colada suffers from a condition the band has deemed “heterolepsy,” which means he can slip into a heterosexual fit at times and must be rescued by his fellow bandmates.

As colorful as his band is, Maris is the biggest visual spectacle Denver has ever seen. With his purple or pink Mohawk, white contact lenses and outrageous persona, Maris has made his mark on the music scene, which he remains determined to consume. Eventually, he said, he will be all that is left of the scene.

“You’ll turn on MTV and it will be our video, and if we only have three or four videos, so sorry, you’ll have to watch the same four videos over and over again,” he said.

Maris has constructed a detailed back story for his stage persona. He did not always have such a need for rock and roll, he said. In fact, he started his music career in the disco band The Heterosexually Challenged, until one night he went to a hotel with the wrong boy. “He was too hot. He was just kind of staring vacantly. I thought he was the big dumb type. I like those types,” Maris said. “He turned out to be the big, strong silent undead type.”

A night of rough romance ensued, and when Maris’ head was smashed through the headboard, he was killed. He awoke the next morning as a zombie with a need for rock and roll and brains.
Since that night, Maris has been prowling the music scene looking for victims and bands to destroy to make way for his own ambitions.

“Zombie-pop is the wave of the future,” he said. “Since all bands will be dead, there will be no more different genres. There will just be us and zombie-pop.” Maris isn’t concerned with whether or not his band is truly the best; he is only worried about securing its position as the last band standing.

He also isn’t concerned with how long it will take to kill off every band in the world either.

“I don’t care because I’m undead, and I have all the time in the world, don’t I?” he said. “After all, I have to eat. So you see, my plan is perfect. I get to kill and become big, and I get to eat and dine upon brains.”