Exotic Animal Petting Zoo - Through the Thicket... Across Endless Mountains

    I won't force you to conjure up the same unfortunate mental picture of bands fucking and impregnating one another as I did a few days ago with my lineage of Son of Aurelius, but I want to play a similar game this evening. So this I'm going with a cooking analogy.

     Start with the melodic sensibilities and mild experimental streak of Death Before Disco as your base, then add a healthy dose of the angularity and spastic chaos of The Dillinger Escape Plan. Now to temper that Dillinger mathcore insanity, thin the mixture out with a dash of the slightly more straight ahead hardcore/post-hardcore of Every Time I Die, and voila! You've got a little something called Exotic Animal Petting Zoo.

     I've posted about these guys a couple of times before, but my opinion of them has risen since I picked up a copy of sophomore disc Tree of Tongues, so I figured it's time to give them the spotlight again. I can't quite pin down exactly why, but this band feels like a spiritual successor to At the Drive-In. Maybe the "recipe" above doesn't accurately convey this, but the combination of chops and manic energy possessed by Exotic Animal Petting Zoo just keep reminding me of the now-defunct ATDI.

     Any way you slice it, however, they're a band you should know about. Check out "Through the Thicket... Across Endless Mountains" from the aforementioned Tree of Tongues and start getting familiar with Exotic Animal Petting Zoo post haste.