One of my biggest passions outside of ska music is paleontology. I regularly watch paleontology streams on twitch (Paleontologizing featuring Danny Anduza). I love dinosaurs! A few months ago someone shared a post about a band that dressed up on stage as fossils, including dinosaur fossils, and played ska songs that often featured lyrics about dinosaurs! What? How had my two worlds combined so perfectly and how had I not heard this sooner? I immediately looked up the band, and they had just released 2 singles earlier this year, but they had been around for nearly a decade. It was time to delve in and give their music a listen.
While they definitely have some ska songs, I think they were pretty on the nose when they called themselves comedy rock. Like a mix between Gwar, Weird Al, and the Aquabats, but with themes mostly of paleontology, Bonehenge writes brilliant, occasionally educational, fun and creative songs that are just fun to listen to. While I highly recommend you listen to their 2020 album L.A. Excavation, I’m going to focus this review on their two singles from 2024.
In April of 2024 Bonehenge released “Evolution”, a slower rock and roll ballad that I would swear was written by a 1980s hair metal band that wanted to have one slow song to force all the fans to bust out their lighters- complete with a rock and roll guitar solo, late vocal duet, and beautiful vocals about… the passage of time. Motley Crue, Poison, Warrant, Bon Jovi, you’ve met your match with Bonehenge.
However, in March they released a punk/ ska/ rock track that blows my mind. “Living Fossils” is an allegory about the industrial revolution and its effects on modern society where the horseshoe crab represents man and the passage of time is symbolic of the ruling class and the lack of evolutionary change over 450 million years is a metaphor for Billy Madison. OK, that’s not what that song is about at all, and you are all dumber for having read me write that sentence. You should award me zero points, and instead listen to this amazing song that is literally and actually about horseshoe crabs and their lack of significant evolutionary crab that has remained physically unchanged since first appearing in the fossil record in the Ordivisian Period some 210 million years before the first dinosaurs started walking on earth surviving most of earth’s major mass extinctions. It’s a fun, upbeat jam full of scientifically accurate facts.
Bonehenge assures me that they are working on more songs to release and that they have plenty of live shows in the LA and Orange County area and they are a live show that you won’t want to miss. Stream their music and follow their socials to find out more and for the change to watch dinosaurs rock on the stage.
Written by Gimpleg