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.

On first listen, it might surprise you to find that Pig Irön look like four blokes you might hire to help you move house. Or collect money with menaces. Coming straight out of Kingston-Upon-Thames, that well known South London enclave of smoky bars and roughly hewn bluesmen,

Their harmonica playing has a swampy, original feel, their tone’s gritty and they can conjure up images of endless highways populated by bike gangs cutting in slo-mo through the Midwest with admirable ease. Think Sons Of Anarchy without all the spousal abuse and people driving their motorcycles into each other.

At times – Carve Your Name, Low Grade Man – it’s deft Southern rock (imagine the Black Crowes if they came from Streatham, and that’s a compliment), at others – the relentless Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, the emphatic Bootlace Noose – they sound like a fist landing. They can even sound considered in The Curse Of An Aching Heart. You can imagine them at the end of the bar now, a rueful shake of the head, another drink drunk.

Philip Wilding is a novelist, journalist, scriptwriter, biographer and radio producer. As a young journalist he criss-crossed most of the United States with bands like Motley Crue, Kiss and Poison (think the Almost Famous movie but with more hairspray). More latterly, he’s sat down to chat with bands like the slightly more erudite Manic Street Preachers, Afghan Whigs, Rush and Marillion.