Meet Finland's Kid-Friendly Dinosaur Metal Band

Since Finland has more heavy metal bands per capita than any other country in the world, it makes sense that one of the nation's exports—along with saunas and Nokia phones—would be a hard-edged musical group that's just for kids.

Hevisaurus plays the same ear-blistering, power-chord laden tunes as many other Scandinavian metal groups, but with a family-friendly twist: its members dress up in dinosaur costumes, and their lyrics are about “warriors and dragons that are drinking milk or doing whatever is interesting for 2-7 year olds,” one of the band’s creators, Nino Laurenne, tells Vice’s music channel, Noisey.  

The band’s fictional origin story states that its five members sprung from metal dinosaur eggs, which survived the mass extinction only to be hatched by lightning bolts and witches’ chants millions of years later. The real-life version? Hevisaurus was founded in 2009 after one of its members, a metalhead named Mirka Rantanen, took his kids to a children’s music concert and got the idea to form his own band. 

Since then, Hevisaurus has signed with Sony, released seven albums, inspired several tribute bands, and sold more than 170,000 CDs in Finland. They also have a movie coming out soon—a flick we're envisioning as a cross between Barney's Great Adventure and This Is Spinal Tap. Watch the trailer for the film above, or learn more about the dino group’s prehistoric past on their website. 

All images are courtesy of Youtube.

[h/t Uproxx]