Overcoming life-threatening illness and finding a fresh perspective on real priorities, Dinosaur Pile-Up roar back from the brink with their new single ‘Bout To Lose It and announce their signing to Mascot Records.
It’s been six years since the release of their last studio album. “People need clarity about what happened,” Matt Bigland explains. “It’s been so cathartic to lay it out.” He began documenting his story on the band’s Instagram account in December 2024, laying bare everything – You can see it in his own words here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4.
‘Bout To Lose It is 5 years of pent-up emotion – hope, despair, resignation and colossal bravery – let loose into a blistering 3:40 minutes of Dinosaur Pile-Up at their absolute best. Struggle. Vulnerability. Pain. Resilience. Love. It’s been a hell of a journey. In many ways, brilliant, shapeshifting opener – and lead single – ‘Bout To Lose It begins at the end, dropping us into the shoes of a frontman chomping at the bit to get back to business but low on confidence, unsure if fans still give a damn after so much time away: ‘I guess I’m back on the edge / Maybe I never left! / Would have been nice if you cared / But what did I expect?!’
There were six people in the ward the second time Matt Bigland admitted himself to the hospital. Three of them didn’t make it out alive. Life is short. It’s fragile. It can end in an instant. That’s the harsh truth with which the Dinosaur Pile-Up frontman has wrestled with. When ulcerative colitis left him in critical care in early 2021, he began to think again about what it’s really all about.
“You think you’re halfway through life, but then you realise you might be right at the end,” Matt smiles. “Being in that room was scary. I felt incredibly vulnerable. I had no control. But hearing people in the final hours of their lives forced me to think about what would happen if I were to die. What was I leaving behind? What really mattered while I was here? What bullshit did I waste my time worrying about? What had true value to me? I’ve always understood that life can be fleeting and fragile – how important it is to take every chance – but I’d never processed it like that…”
Unwilling to sift through the layers of daily trauma with every friend who checked-in to see how he was doing – indeed, often unable to speak through a mouth filled with centimetre-wide sores – Matt found himself defaulting to a wry response of ‘I’ve felt better…’
Flash back to 2018. Ten years of chasing opportunity and betting big on every chance had built Dinosaur Pile-Up into one of the most beloved alt. rock bands in the UK. It had also left them flat broke, physically and mentally drained, and without a label to release their imminent fourth album, Celebrity Mansions. It became their make-or-break record. Between Matt, bassist Jim Cratchley and drummer Mike Sheils, it was agreed that failure would mean calling it quits. However, the rock gods were smiling on them, and the album was a hit. They began the year on a US tour with Shinedown and lined up major summer festival dates, along with a North American tour with The Offspring and Sum 41 in North America through to the end of the year. They were soaring. 2020 was going to be massive – then everything changed.
“People don’t relate things like health crises with being a dude in a band,” he stresses the sense of isolation that came with the ordeal. “We’re more associated with rocking out and having a great time – even more so with today’s Instagram culture. At my lowest point, I couldn’t have felt further from being that dude onstage playing to a big crowd. That was difficult to rationalise. I was skin and bones, wrecked, feeling like I was going to die, wondering what had happened to me and why.”
Unwilling to portray an image that didn’t truly reflect what he was going through, Matt dropped off social media entirely. It added another level of separation from the outside world, most of whom had no idea the nightmare he was living. February, 2021 was the first time he’d been admitted to hospital, a stay cut short due to a lack of beds. “I was sent home with permission to self-administer morphine. It felt dangerous. I could have killed myself with that syringe.”
The band resurfaced for performances at Reading and Leeds 2021 – which saw Matt still swollen from the massive Methylprednisolone dose that had gotten him out of hospital – along with an end-of-year UK tour with Enter Shikari and Nova Twins. Their long-delayed Kentish Town Forum headline show in March, 2022 was an emotional explosion, alongside a riotous performance at the 2000Trees festival that summer. 2023 saw them take the stage at 2000Trees again, with the summer centring around a triumphant return to Download festival.
“‘Bout To Lose It is about feeling completely and utterly on the edge of your capacity emotionally. I wanted to write a song that had an intro that would correctly set the scene as the first track back after a 4 or 5 year break from being out ‘in the world’ due to ill health. I wanted it to be intense and visceral. And I wanted it to be heavy metal,” Matt says.
“It’s not about whether I might get to be rich and famous any more,” he explains. “It’s about being excited for people to get to hear my songs. I want to be free of the bullshit of how people perceive me – or us – and what it means to be a ‘cool band’. I’m proud that we’re still here as a band at all. I’m proud that I’m still here as a person. And I’m just so stoked that I’m still able to make music. That’s what I want to do. That’s why I’m here…”
