Whilst crisscrossing our great nation with a friend, eliminating items from our respective "Bucket Lists," I found myself in our nation's capitol. The primary attraction was obvious: the bones of long-extinct giants found in the Smithsonian. Standing in their presence, fully assembled and monolithic, two things were immediately apparent: these creatures, in their halcyon days of Jurassic chaos, were innately great, but hanging out with them would have been a really bad time. And there's nothing I like more than a great bad time, which is something Austin, TX's When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth knows a thing or two about.

Any punk band coming out of Texas has a high mark to hit, considering the drug-and-dust-coated pantheon that ranges from The Butthole Surfers to the homophobe-baiting blues-punk OGs The Dicks. While Dinosaurs doesn't work according to party lines stylistically, it's got scuz for days and sounds legitimately troubled/troubling. An astute friend of mine pointed out recently that "two drummers" is the new "no bass player," but you know what? I'll take it. Dinosaurs has the two drummers (nice and stoopid), the two vocalists (alternately lobotomy-blank and spittle-dripping manic); everything you need for your art-punk house party gone horribly awry. Armed with these tools, it's hard to go wrong, and Dinosaurs acquits itself admirably.

The stand-out one-two punch is "Hypnotic Locks," which ends with a dizzying freakout, perfectly setting up the head-nod riffs of "It's Not the Heat, It's the Humidity." The one aspect of Not Noiice that gave me a moment of pause was the slightly vague air of aimlessness: it's all a great mess, but... why? Of course, the answer is "Why not?" and that's good enough for me. They're nihilists, sure, but there's plenty here to be afraid of.

Jeff Tobias