Something Creepy This Way Comes
Goth country band Meatdraw brings its carnival of corpses to Calgary
(FFWD MAGAZINE)

In kissin' town
Winters wet harelip
Pulled coins from our ear

- Marco Bozenich when asked to describe how Meatdraw came into existence.

Two brothers are leading a band of talented deviants across the country on a madcap carnival of the macabre. The Bozenich Brothers, Marco and Stefan, are at the helm of a ship carrying a strange arsenal of musicians including drummer Marek Tyler, Lily Fawn and Sara Hart and new additions Megan Boddy and Grayson Walker, formally of Frog Eyes.

Undeniably, Meatdraw is known for its flamboyant expression of the musically bizarre. Playing rather peculiar musical instruments, they coax even the most settled spirits into an unholy hoedown. Certainly, the musical saw, a tin can, a bicycle wheel and chain-links dropped into a bucket wouldn't be considered your average instrument collection, but the tradition of using a mixture of traditional and homemade instruments is nothing new, harkening back to the vaudevillian jug bands of the 1900s. It's a quixotic recipe that makes for a wide aural palette.

"During the recording process we grabbed whatever, whenever," admits Bozenich. "At least as far as percussion and random noise, and it didn't always sound cool. The chain can came about 'cause it was laying around, but in the case of the bowed bicycle wheel, much more forethought went into that. We even played all the spokes to see what notes they reproduced and used certain spokes to embellish the arrangements. So in other words, it's applied as a regular instrument."
Couple weird instrumentation with stomp-gospel dirges, tuneful exorcisms and post-apocalyptic crooner ballads, and you have a shadow of the Meatdraw experience.

For anyone who's seen a Meatdraw show, they lie somewhere between a weird carnie rent party and a musical séance for ghostly deviants. Stranger still is the fact the scene is set even before a single note is played. For each show, musicians wind their way to the stage in a flailing, funeral-like procession that begins a ghastly pageant fit for the depths of Hades.

"Yeah. It's so simple yet effective," confesses Bozenich. "I'm actually a little surprised how much it takes people aback. I guess it could be the PEZ I dispense to the crowd with my ass like a sawed off shotgun, while my brother beats his own face with a dildo shaped like a crucifix. It really is a religious experience, but I don't want to give too much away."

Meatdraw's sometimes aberrant humour is apparent, as is their penchant for the macabre. The band's latest self-titled release on Self Righteous Records contains first person accounts from a variety of apparitions – prisoners, ghosts, Siamese twins, cannibals and incestuous elopers who eerily moan of their imminent fate on the creepy "We Have the Nighttime."

"I like fairy tales," admits Bozenich. "I like fairies, centaurs and unicorns and not because I think they're funny or that I am rediscovering some fascination of my youth in a nostalgic manner. I actually like the little fuckers. Some of them are my best friends."