You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

When a singer’s band walks out on him and he starts referencing Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now as inspiration for his new album’s title track and the exposing of his inner savage as the album’s theme, you go in expecting music like cows being ritually slaughtered, judiciously lathered in angsty bursts of black neurosis.

But despite Dinosaur Pile‐Up’s Matt Bigland being forced to make this entire second album on his own – as he had, by choice, with the Leeds Brit‐rockers’ 2010 debut Growing Pains – Nature Nurture is an amiable 36 minutes of pop‐savvy guitar crunch with a synthetic sizzle that avoids introverted indulgence in favour of festival‐friendly Foo Fighting gleam rock about girls.

In keeping with Matt working with Band Of Skulls producer Ian Davenport and support slots with Cage The Elephant and Twin Atlantic, tracks like Summer Gurl, Heather and White T-Shirt And Jeans beam with transatlantic accessibility and post‐emo pizzazz. The riffola! The riffola!

Mark Beaumont is a music journalist with almost three decades' experience writing for publications including Classic Rock, NME, The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Times, Uncut and Melody Maker. He has written major biographies on Muse, Jay-Z, The Killers, Kanye West and Bon Iver and his debut novel [6666666666] is available on Kindle.