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I reviewed some heavy albums near the end of 2016, and I mean "heavy" in every sense. Anagnorisis put together a powerful, multi-layered chunk of personal history, and I talked about Oskoreien's take on free will and mass shooter Charles Whitman. So it's time to start 2017 off with a little breather and revisit a more fun-loving project: The Vomiting Dinosaurs.
Matt Hinch covered Worship the Porcelain God, their first album for Grimoire Records, back in April of 2015. With their second Grimoire release, the band has turned their eyes skyward with Exoplanets. Exoplanets are planets that have been discovered outside our own solar system, and since we're hellbent on ruining our own, The Vomiting Dinosaurs's tour of the heavens comes at an appropriate time.
Matt described the band as "seriously amped thrash, death and grind," and to be honest, not much has changed on that score. If anything, the band has moved to slightly grindier song lengths, hovering around one minute in comparison to Porcelain God's two- and three-minute epics. "Lava Planet" clocks in at a massive four minutes, but the whole album (or EP?) tops out at 16 minutes. I live in the Boston area, so I've been able to measure my travel times in Exoplanet units. Most trips involve two to three full plays of the album at least, but you know what? I'm happy to let it repeat, because it's fast, dirty, and fun.
And I've learned some science by checking out some of the song titles. "Circumbinary" has a great, grumbling riff, while at the same time describing a planet that orbits two stars instead of one. "Ganymede" is a short ambient interlude, but did you know it's also a moon of Jupiter that happens to have its own magnetic field and a thin oxygen atmosphere? If you use Exoplanets as a study guide, though, you do need to be careful: "Jupiter" is not, in fact, an exoplanet, although the song's only lyrics, "I AM SO BIG!" is a correct description of the planet.
But maybe don't worry about the details so much and just thrash around in your car to this one. I promise it will help make the grim ending of 2016 and worrisome beginning to 2017 seem far away for at least a little while.