“Alesana is a rock band from Raleigh, North Carolina.

At this point in the game, I was getting paid well to be Maris The Great. I sometimes got paid by record labels, but usually I conducted all my business with the bands directly. That way, I could weed out any time wasters or ascertain if I had a homophobia problem in the band. Talking to people and taking care of the business end myself, is how I kept things running smoothly for 15 years.

Alesana’s label contacted and wanted to pay me to kill the group when they came to Denver and played at Marquis Theater. Since the label was so upfront about it and promptly mailed me a check, I figured they must have set things up with the group and everything was on the level.

Boy, was I wrong.

When Andrea and I arrived at The Marquis, the band refused to come out of their dressing room. At one point, one of them stuck his head out the door, said “we’re sick, we can’t do it,” and slammed the door in our face. A few minutes later, another member opened the door and said, “There is no way we are getting blood in our hair.”

I was furious. If there’s two things I can’t stand, its flaky-ass bands that don’t communicate well or bands that turn into little girls when we work together. So I turned around and walked out. It was 100% Andrea that smoothed things over with the group. I’m not sure what she said to them, but she got me to come back and got the band to agree to do the shoot. But it was torture. We had to walked each member outside personally, coddling him and reassuring him that he was going to be alright. The first member we laid on the pavement, looked like he was going to start crying. He said “you’re not going to put much blood on me, are you?” And I said, “Of course not!” as I dumped it all over his head. Every member was like that, except for one. Vocalist Dennis Lee was the coolest. He embraced death and had a wonderful, rock and roll personality. It’s no surprise that his death picture turned out the best (center square)

So, we eventually finished the shoot. The pictures are what they are. When you consider what we went through to get them, they turned out smashingly well.

I tried to shrug the whole thing off and worked on the feature as planned, getting it ready for Hails & Horns and my website. But then the band refused to do an interview with me. The label and I tried for weeks to get them to comply, but to no avail. So, the Alesana murder is the first in my history, that is photos only, with no accompanying interview.

Take one guess how I feel about Alesana?”

~Maris The Great