Musical groups targeted at kids tend to be pretty safe and silly, with lighthearted pop music and matching t-shirts, but a band from Finland called Hevisaurus has found a way to appeal to children and be totally badass at the same time by playing heavy metal while dressed as dinosaurs. This comes from Consequence Of Sound, which put together a quick introduction on Hevisaurus and interviewed the group’s producer Nino Laurenne and its frontman “Mr. Hevisaurus.” The band has sold 200,000 copies of its albums and even appeared in its own feature film, so clearly the whole dinosaur act is working pretty well.
As for why that is, Laurenne suggests that Hevisaurus’ appeal comes from the fact that it doesn’t try to teach lessons to the kids listening, preferring instead to just let them have fun and introduce them to the world of heavy metal music. The goal is that kids will listen to Hevisaurus, then move on to more traditional metal bands when they get older, and then return to Hevisaurus when they realize that the music is still pretty cool—something that The Wiggles or whatever probably don’t count on.
