“It’s a reminder of my resilience rather than my suffering”: Inside Dinosaur Pile-Up’s inspiring fight for better days

“The main triggers of autoimmune diseases are stress, fatigue and bad diet.” Matt Bigland is explaining the factors that aggravate his ulcerative colitis, the chronic inflammatory bowel disease he was diagnosed with during the pandemic, fracturing his physical and mental health and contributing to his band Dinosaur Pile-Up being off the road for six years. “Touring is probably the last thing I should be doing, then…”

Thankfully, that’s not what Matt is up to right now. Instead, he’s at the home near Hastings he shares with his wife, Brazilian feminist punk Karen Dió, who’s currently preparing for a Kerrang! interview of her own. In recent months, Matt has been acting as touring guitarist for Karen, which has provided him with a relatively low pressure reintroduction to the live side of the job.

For Matt, whose illness became so debilitating he believed it would kill him, being back in the fray means minimising his chances of becoming unwell – a prospect that still causes him anxiety – through careful management of his condition. He doesn’t drink, which takes that element out of the equation, but he sets himself realistic boundaries around things like scheduling, which is difficult when it’s not your band, but easier when your wife is the boss. But how will Matt fair when he’s fully back in the saddle for Dinosaur Pile-Up?

The band’s leader recalls the days when “DPU”, as he refers to them, might have a post-show drive of several hours, meaning they’d arrive at their hotel at 3am, stumbling into bed with the knowledge they’d be up again soon to do press at a radio station. Matt shudders at the thought. “I’m not gonna do that now,” he says with conviction. “I’m in a different place.”

Some of the places Matt has found himself this year have been a lot of fun. Sharing stages with Limp Bizkit on the nu-metal legends’ colourful UK/European Loserville jaunt, for instance, as well as experiencing the comforts that can come with being in the orbit of a big band – even if, says the frontman, “High-pressure, big attention stuff isn’t really what I naturally gravitate towards.”

• Come to the Dinosaur Pile-Up x Kerrang! pop-up party on September 13

Despite the good times, the main draw towards this side mission has been witnessing Karen’s way with a crowd at close quarters. “She’s born to be onstage, so that’s really fun to watch,” he says admiringly of his wife. “It’s been fun too, though a bit of a shock to the system. But it’s been a positive experience to warm-up for our shows.”

Those live dates, five in the UK initially, followed by a longer run of U.S. gigs on A Day To Remember and Yellowcard’s Maximum Fun Tour, are in support of Dinosaur Pile-Up’s recently released fifth album, I’ve Felt Better. It’s an unsurprisingly excellent offering from a remarkably consistent British band, pairing ’90s alt.rock stylings with Matt’s bruised but bravado worldview. What might come as a shock, however, is that it isn’t defined by the trauma of its creator.

“That would be boring,” says Matt, pushing the long tresses of his hair behind his ears as he shakes his head. “I don’t want to dwell on it too much, and I don’t want to moan about it in some ‘woe is me’ kind of way. It was one of the most challenging times I’ve had in my life, but I don’t want to focus on that.”

That’s not to say the bad times are bypassed. The bouncing Sick Of Being Down and the moving I Don’t Love Nothing And Nothing Loves Me were both written in the haze of post-convolescence, the glare of the hospital ward strip lights still there when Matt closed his eyes; his attempts to process what he’s been through assisted by a therapist. The whole episode is dealt with more explicitly, yet soberly, on I’ve Felt Better’s title-track (‘I got sick, now shit’s not the same’), though its rousing nature sends the heart and the head in different directions, which is very much in keeping with Matt’s style.

“I often feel I avoid writing sad songs,” he explains. “Maybe I don’t want to be in that space. So even if I’m saying something that’s sad, or something that frustrates me, it’s dressed in this way that doesn’t initially feel like that.”

Plus, Matt is a prolific songwriter and has been doing this for a long time, so has accumulated plenty of top-notch tunes. “Some of them were written way before I was even ill,” he admits. Indeed, Sunflower almost made it on to their previous album, 2019’s Celebrity Mansions, while Punk Kiss was inspired by the warm reception Basement’s fans afforded DPU when the two bands toured together in 2016. Others, meanwhile, have been around slightly less time, and a few are brand new.

Back when Matt lay in his hospital bed, his body rail thin and his face engorged by the steroids administered to treat him, he would think regretfully about the music he might never get to release. When he was finally discharged, then, he “wasn’t fucking around”, asking himself a question to determine what made the grade for the new record: “If I were to die tomorrow, what tracks would be like, ‘Fuck, I can’t believe no-one ever heard this kickass song’?” That filtering system yielded I’ve Felt Better.

If you were going to select one word to describe the resulting record, ‘defiant’ would be a solid choice. This is most obviously illustrated by My Way. As irresistible a song as DPU have ever put their name to, it features 39-year-old Matt’s highly serviceable rapping and a rally against the expectations levelled at a musician of a certain age: ‘Just marrying my girlfriend / Living for the weekend / Pop-out a kid / Settle down and quit the band / Nah, quitting ain’t my style / So fuck it.’

In a case of adding insult to injury, Matt’s illness interrupted the flow of a band that were finally beginning to make headway and receive their dues. At the time of its release six years ago, Celebrity Mansions seemed to be a transformative record. Made without the support of a label, it was eventually picked up by Parlophone, which, coupled with big shows in the U.S. with The Offspring and Sum 41, plus the radio success of the track Back Foot, suggested that their next album could be the big one.

This may still come to pass with I’ve Felt Better, of course, though Dinosaur Pile-Up – completed by bassist Jim Cratchley and drummer Mike Shells – have more of a hill to climb now. But is that how Matt views the narrative? Celebrity Mansions may be feted as a critical step with the benefit of hindsight, but did it feel that way at the time?

“For sure,” he confirms. “It kicked off in a way that was surprising to us. It felt like things could really start to go somewhere and the energy was exciting. But six months in or whatever, COVID happened and that stopped everything. We thought it would be a two-week thing, but it wasn’t, and then I got ill. It was terrible timing and I’d often ask myself, ‘Why did that all have to happen when it did?’ But it did happen and there’s no point looking back and wasting energy. I’m still glad to be here and I’m super proud of this record, and if no-one else gives a fuck, then I’m stoked to still be able to release music.”

Matt has every right to feel proud and stoked, because I’ve Felt Better is a superb illustration of his songwriting and indefatigable spirit. “It’s a monument to the fact that I got through it, rather than to say how shit that period of time was,” is how he puts it. “It’s a reminder of my resilience rather than my suffering.”

Another positive from all this, aside from the creation of one of the year’s best albums, is what it’s done to Matt’s sense of self-importance. On Sick Of Being Down, he says he’s ‘sick of my ego’, while on the title-track he goes as far as suggesting he’s killed his ego off entirely (‘Crazy how much that shit could change’). Is that advisable for a rock star, for whom an inflated sense of one’s own capabilities is something of a pre-requisite?

On My Way, Matt recalls, ‘As a kid, I thought I’d be famous and become a billionaire / But maybe I’d be better off flipping burgers in the air,’ confirming his aspirations recalibrating over time. Regardless, what he wants from I’ve Felt Better is the same as he’s wanted for any other Dinosaur Pile-Up record: that there are people who listen to and admire it as much as he does The Colour And The Shape by Foo Fighters, or anything by Rage Against The Machine. Is that too much to ask? It’s not like he wants the other, more toxifying hallmarks of success…

“Would I want hyper fame?” Matt ponders for a second. “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t. Some people would love that, but I don’t know if I would, because it brings up so many conflicted feelings. Autonomy is what I’d want… to spend time how I want to spend my time on creative projects.”

That certainly sounds better to us.

I’ve Felt Better is out now. Come to the DPU x Kerrang! pop-up party on September 13

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