Some budding rock stars wait tables or flip burgers to aid their careers. Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson famously boasted he would wank off a tramp for success. Madina Lake’s identical twins Nathan (vocals) and Matthew Leone (bass) went one better by entering the US endurance TV show Fear Factor to win some much-needed funds for their band.

Pitched against some buffed-up cowboy morons and whooping cheerleader-types the diminutive twins found themselves wading through a trough of fetid offal - cow’s liver, stomach, spleen, heart – gnawing meat off a rancid jawbone and drinking down pints of rotten liquidised flesh. All in the name of rock.

“You feel like at this point in your life you’ve experienced the spectrum of flavours but that was off the chart,” laughs Matthew. “I can’t even explain to you what a raw cow’s jawbone tastes like. Seriously. It’s the worst flavour imaginable, the only recognisable taste was that it was a little salty. The funny thing is we only entered as a joke. Us and our friends would make fun of these annoyingly competitive buff jocks so we thought it would be funny to go on there, two skinny guys.”

The twins walked away with ,000 – enough to fund their early recordings and purchase a tour van – but not without a meat-induced near-death experience first.

“Everybody who swam in the cow’s parts got open flesh wounds and contracted a really bad version of cellulitus,” adds the bassist. “We were in hospital for a week as the infection spread to two inches below my heart. We were within hours from dying, while the TV producers reminded us we were contractually obliged not to even discuss it…”

Fully recovered, Madina Lake - who also feature guitarist Mateo Camargo and drummer Daniel Torelli - got busy. Their name refers to a mythical town they have created, while their debut album ‘From Them, Through Us, To You’ is a concept about a young woman, Adalia, who goes missing there.

“We read a lot of philosophy, which lead to us discussing the social and pop cultures of today,” says Matthew. “We wanted to convey some deeper ideas and we did that by creating Madina Lake, a 1950s town isolated from the rest of the world and inhabited by recognisable characters. The town is a dreamy landscape with some dark undercurrents.”

Signed to Roadrunner in 2005, their career has snowballed. One day Madina Lake are playing The Barfly, the next they’re touring the US with Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance. If things continue the Leones look set to become the world’s most recognisable twins.

“We sort of feel like we’re one person divided into two,” says Matthew of the benefit’s of being in a band with his brother. “We’re very in tune with each, we always know if one of us is sick or hurt. There are differences too though. Nathan is more practical, a little edgier and rougher. Whereas I’m dreamier, the head-in-the-clouds one.”

Do you find many women have a fantasy of being with twins? “Yes,” he beams. “But in those situations I’m the one likely to pull the plug. I mean, you really don’t want to see your brother naked do you?

One time at a show in Portland or somewhere we ran into a set of twins, these young girls, who told us they were telepathic. We would tell one of them something and the other would guess exactly what we said – we did it a hundred times and they were right each time. Then when we were done, they said ‘OK, so shall we all go get a room together then..?”