Cover for CD , CD + DVD & CD + Blu-ray
1) Dinosaur
2) CHAMP
3) Still Alive
4) Haruka
5) Soredemo Yappari
6) Seimei
7) Queen Of The Night
8) SKYROCKET
9) Rooftop
10) Yowai Otoko
11) Itoshiki Yuurei
12) King Of The Street
13) Purple Pink Orange
B'z's last album release was 2015's EPIC DAY . Only 1 single Seimei / Still Alive is included in DINOSAUR & their 52nd single RED is excluded from the tracklist .
All songs in DINOSAUR were written by vocalist Inaba Koshi while all songs were composed by guitarist Matsumoto Tak .
Kicking things off in DINOSAUR is the track that shares the same title as the album .
Dinosaur was chosen to be used to promote the movie Geostorm when it opened in Japan cinemas on 19th Jan & this's the the 1st time that B'z provided a theme song for a Hollywood movie .
Dean Devlin , the director of Geostorm , expressed excitement over working with B'z for the movie . He felt the band's guitar rifts & lyrics were the perfect fit for the disaster film & hoped that their energy would attract young audiences
Geostorm tells the story of a world whose weather was controlled by satellites . It improved the state of the the planet until the satellites malfunction & start creating disasters instead .
A video was made for Dinosaur but it's not included in the DVD/Blu-ray discs .
I didn't find Dinosaur as catchy as B'z's previous album opening tracks but the accompanied video changed my opinion on it considerably as it was 1 of the best videos I've seen that was released last year so that definitely helped .
Surprisingly B'z didn't sang Dinosaur as the 1st song during their current ongoing B'z LIVE-GYM 2017-2018 "LIVE DINOSAUR" which I thought it's a bit odd .
The next song CHAMP is the only new track that was included in B'z best album B'z COMPLETE SINGLE BOX . Promo wise , it was used to promote B'z x 7/11 fair collaboration campaign .
Just like Dinosaur , a video was also made for CHAMP but both videos are not included in the DVD/Blu-ray discs of DINOSAUR .
I'm relieved to see CHAMP made the cut in Dinosaur as I wasn't willing to buy B'z COMPLETE SINGLE BOX just for only 1 new song as the price to buy B'z COMPLETE SINGLE BOX is through the roof .
It's interesting that B'z chose to make music videos for both Dinosaur & CHAMP and both songs are side by side each other in the album too .
Still Alive is the 2nd A-side of B'z's 53rd single Seimei / Stil Alive & it was used as the theme song for TBS's drama A LIFE ~Itoshiki Hito~ that starred ex SMAP's Kimura Takuya .
Haruka is a pretty catchy mid tempo song while the next song which's the 1st album ballad ie. Soredemo Yappari is quite nice .
Seimei is the 1st A-side of B'z's 53rd single Seimei / Still Alive & this was used in the ads of UCC BLACK Muto that featured B'z themselves .
I earlier on said that Dinosaur was not the 1st song that kicked things off in the current ongoing B'z LIVE-GYM 2017-2018 "LIVE DINOSAUR" & that 'honour' actually goes to Seimei which in a way I'm not surprised as it's 1 of those songs that really set the tone on what to expect subsequently during a concert .
The next 2 album tracks Queen Of The Night & SKYROCKET are both equally good . Queen Of The Night is a mid tempo song while SKYROCKET is very catchy & has lots of great vibes attached to it .
Rooftop is 1 of the album more angsty driven songs but despite this I like it & it's 1 of my personal favourite song .
The next song Yowai Otoko is an interesting track as the 2nd 1/2 of it the melody changed briefly with saxophone beats kind of randomly thrown in . I wished that aspect was much longer though .
Itoshiki Yuurei is another mid tempo song . While it's not as slow ballad driven as Soredemo Yappari , I enjoy listening to it nonetheless .
The 2nd last track King Of The Street was chosen to be used as the theme song to promote the new Ma ・Sangoku Musou 8 video game that will be released next month on 8th Feb .
King Of The Street was love on 1st listen for me as I love how punchy & aggressive sounding it's due to the over the top guitar riffs in the melody . And in a way the song does sound it's used to promote a video game so even if I don't know about it , it's not surprising .
Purple Pink Orange is the last album track which's an emotional driven song & I feel it's a good track before concluding things in DINOSAUR .
When comes to good 'ol JRock music , B'z can do no wrong & the fact that this year's their 30th anniversary in the business , it's testament of their longevity as many JRock artistes have come & gone but not them .
Reaching an album milestone with their 20th album , DINOSAUR is similar with B'z's previous album EPIC DAY in that both albums only contain 1 single each . Despite this , their latest album is a very solid release so I wasn't worried if I was going to like it & thankfully most of the new songs are pretty good .
It would have been nice if B'z included RED as I like it a lot but I'm sure they have their reasons in excluding it from DINOSAUR . My only grouse about the album is that I wished B'z included more album ballads but other than that , they never disappoints .
2018 is B'z's 30th anniversary & I really hope they have something big planned be it music or non music wise . It would be fantastic if they were to perform outside of Japan . If so it's better late than never .
That said here's to even more longer longevity to B'z !