My-oh-Marvels: The Human Marvels performed at the ’Sco last night.

If you’re into blood and needles, pitchforks and horns, if blue skin or women with whiskers turn you on, if you’ve ever tried to set yourself on fire or put out a cigarette on your bare tongue, The Human Marvels will rock your unconventional socks. They played at the ’Sco last night, and you so should have been there.

The band consists of The Enigma and Katzen the Tiger Lady, who are both in the 1999 Guinness Book of World Records for their stare-inducing, attention-grabbing shockingly pervasive body art. They’ve appeared on the X-Files, Penn and Teller, Ripley’s Believe it or Not and TLC, have opened for Nine Inch Nails and had Marilyn Manson open for them.

The Enigma is a reasonably tall guy who probably, judging by his red goatee, used to look very Irish, only now he’s covered head to toe (and everywhere in between, one assumes) with the scaly blue outline of a jigsaw puzzle and accompanying horns. Katzen, on the other hand, chose to decorate her body with a feline theme. Her calves, arms, back and scalp are all clad with the thick, jagged (almost violent-looking) stripes of a Tiger, and protruding from her upper lip are six long plastic kitty whiskers. Her tattoos took a total of 708 hours and 210 different artists from around the world to complete, she boasts.

The Enigma has been accumulating his own tatoo collection for 11 years, starting when Katzen tattooed the original outline of his jigsaw pieces soon after they first met at a coffee shop. The individual pieces are tattooed various shades of blue, some with intricate or paisley-like designs, though many are still left bare. He hopes to be entirely blue one day. The horns themselves sprout mysteriously beneath the blue skin of his shaved scalp. When asked how they got there, he first replied with a smug, “Magic,” but when pushed for more, the truth came out.

“When I was in Heaven they ran out of wings. These were cheaper. You only had to sell your soul and I wasn’t using mine anyway,” The Enigma said.

Though The Human Marvels were the main draw, the two opening acts were shocking and entertaining in their own right. The Zen Master Marky Ray, dubbed a “rock and roll mercenary” by The Enigma, appeared on stage bound by thick metal chains. After the chains were removed, the Zen Master stapled a dollar bill to his forehead, much to the crowd’s approval. Later, kilt-clad and shirtless, The Zen Master lay down on railroad nails and had The Enigma place a cinder block on his sizeable stomach and smash it to pieces with a sledgehammer; his guitar acrobatics didn’t falter for a second during the entire stunt.

Next were the Kismets, a six-person pop rock group whose members’ ages appeared to range from 14 to the late 40s. Fronted by two powerful female vocalists, they almost call to mind groups like Heart or Fleetwood Mac, or perhaps something more folksy, though most of the male members of the band have roots in the early punk-rock of the late ’70s.

“We really like [song] writing and we’re really happy to be here!” vocalist and keyboard player Julia Mann cheerily exclaimed.

Their music was catchy and melodic, leading up to The Human Marvel; they were the calm before the storm.

It’s nearly impossible to describe the spectacles that ensued. The Human Marvels took the stage, Katzen on bass and The Enigma on guitar and vocals, but the music was quickly upstaged by their circus-like stunts. The Enigma seemed to be fond of swallowing things while Katzen had a near-masochistic penchant for pain.

The blue fellow swallowed, among other things, a sword, a condom (which he proceeded to pull out one of his nostrils) and what appeared to be a bottle of Windex, which he first forced through his nose with a giant syringe-like apparatus and drew back out the same way, before drinking the blue liquid in question after wondering aloud if the feat could get him a sponsorship. The most impressive swallowing act, however, was when he brought out a large metal crucifix.

“I’ve had religion shoved down my fucking throat every God-damn day of my life; this is nothing new!” The Enigma screamed. He then lowered the two-foot base of the cross past his esophagus.

Katzen’s behavior was just as shocking. “The woman with nine lives” supporting her weight by leaning against a pitchfork with her neck, allowed The Enigma to place a large cucumber (that he first pushed in and out of his mouth, incidentally) on her upper back and chop it in half with an ax the size of her torso. The lights went out as she played the bass with an electric handsaw, which sent sparks flying and added a buzzing element to the music. She then lit her cigarette with the same sparks, waited until the lights came back up and put the cigarette out on her tongue.

Later, she took two beet skewers and stuck one through a meaty portion of her forearm and another through her hand. As part of the act, she begged the audience to command her to “push.” She then lit the ends of the skewers on fire and put them out in her mouth, pulled the skewers out of her arm and played the rest of the show unalarmed by the small trail of blood dripping from one of the wounds.

Now, this was supposed to be a review of a band, leading one to believe that music was played. That’s a good point, but honestly, with everything else going on up on stage, was anyone paying attention to the music?