There’s something to be said for sticking with a good gimmick. Ultra Raptor leans hard into being Quebec City’s premiere dinosaur-themed speed metal band. Fossilized picks up where 2021’s Tyrants left off with a relentless turbo-charged attack and a distinct intolerance for subtlety.

“Spinosaurus” is a thrashy ode to the theropod that terrorized Sam Neill in Jurassic Park III. “Ptero-Ranger” imagines a battle between a pteranodon (also seen in Jurassic Park III) and a fracking operation. “Bitter Leaf” is a (relatively) grounded and moody track about the dark side of drug dependency.

Speed metal lives and dies with its technicality and there’s no shortage of it here. Metalheads with an appetite for cheese popcorn will lap this stuff up.

Fossilized is available digitally and on CD through Fighter Records.