By snoadmin
If you were to wander around backstage at this summer’s Projekt Revolution tour, you would see that the bands on the touring rock festival were living pretty comfortably. They had shaded backstage lounges and gourmet catered meals, and all of the bands had their very own tour bus – except for one.
Madina Lake, a four-piece rock outfit from Chicago, has been doing the cross-country tour in a Ford van. Littered with clothes, trash and an occasional bottle of urine, the trusty van has made it from Los Angeles to New York and everywhere in between for the 29 dates of the festival.
And although the guys of Madina Lake look at the other bands’ tour buses admiringly, they will never forget the trouble some of them had to go through to get their van.
Twin brothers Matthew (bass) and Nathan Leone (vocals) went on an episode of NBC’s popular gross-out competition show “Fear Factor.” In what was billed as a special twins episode, the bleached-blonde, mohawked twins took on three other teams of identical twins to prove that fear was not a factor for them.
“Nathan and I have a pretty unique, eclectic group of friends with a bizarre sense of humor at home, so we do ridiculous things to make each other laugh,” Matthew told me while standing outside of their beloved van on the San Diego date of Projekt Revolution. “One of them submitted us for ‘Fear Factor.’ So they called me and I was like, ‘Huh? This is [the band] Fear Factory? You want us to go on tour?’ And they were like, ‘No, we want you to do the show.'”
The twins agreed to do it as a joke. They figured they would go on television with their scrawny upper bodies and get kicked off by girls in the first round and give their friends a good laugh.
But when they won the first challenge, an event in which they had to drop out of helicopter into water and swim flags to a buoy in the fastest time, they were awarded a $20,000 gift card from Capital One. It was then that they realized the money could really help the advancement of the band.
But the challenges got harder.
The second challenge sent both of them to the hospital. Hooked up to a pulley system, the brothers had to wade through a pool of cow livers, spleens, tongues and hearts, bite the raw meat off of cow jawbones, pulley to the other side and spit the meat into a grinder where it would get grinded up into a shake. To finish it off, they had to drink the shake.
“People think a lot of that stuff is kind of staged or whatever,” Matthew said. “It was the real deal. It was dangerous. We wound up in the hospital for 10 days and almost died. We got these bacterial infections like flesh eaters disease from swimming in that thing. We were in the hospital and it wasn’t getting better. It was really scary. They had to fly in disease specialists from all over, and finally they found one in Minnesota who was able to stop it.”
But the twins proved that fear was indeed not a factor, and they came home with almost $50,000. With three songs written, the brothers, along with guitarist Mateo Camargo and drummer Dan Torelli, used the money to record a demo and make samplers. Then they bought their trusty Ford van and hit the road.
The band’s work ethic, dedication and unique rock sound landed it a record deal with Roadrunner Records, a rock label that has launched bands like Nickelback, Slipknot and Dragonforce to the Billboard charts. Its debut album, “From Them, Through Us, To You,” was released earlier this year on March 27.
“Our No. 1 ambition going into it was honesty,” Matthew said when asked about the album. “We’re being honest with ourselves and the music that we’re passionate about. It starts out with the poppier element of us, and then it twists into a dark and haunting and weird, uncomfortable vibe. It’s a very honest record. It sort of accents who we are as people because on the surface we are these happy-go-lucky partiers, but all of us deal with a lot of turmoil and have dealt with a lot of tragedy.”
Madina Lake was originally slated to play Warped Tour this summer, but was only offered two weeks on the tour and balked at its trendiness. The band submitted its demo for Projekt Revolution and was hand-picked by Linkin Park to open the tour each day.
“It was the most flattering thing ever for us,” Matthew said. “[Linkin Park] is a band that has been on top of their game for so long. They’ve been unwavered, unaffected by any flash-of-the-pan trend that comes and goes and they stay on top of their game, so there’s definitely something to look up to there. And meeting them and seeing how down-to-earth they are was really an inspiration.”
It’s easy to see why Madina Lake was chosen. On a bill that includes some of the biggest names in rock, like My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday and HIM, Madina Lake’s live show holds its own. The brothers’ energy oozes offstage in a series of jumps, twists and leaps that get the crowd’s attention.
When the band finishes Projekt Revolution it’s going on a headlining tour in England. The band recently won the “Best International Newcomer” from U.K. music magazine Kerrang!, and it has been very successful over there. And while the members hope that success can carry over to the States, right now they are just wishing for bigger digs.
“If we could get a bus that would be nice,” Matthew said. “Every day we send [our label] text messages saying, ‘Did you find any buses lying around the office?’ It hasn’t worked yet.”
