Kasabian’s keen mix of mis-matched musical styles never fails to tempt the ear and rarely changes – a tenacity to style which, by a group’s fourth album, is unexpected, and perhaps ill-advised. This new offering from the Leicestershire quartet is made of their usual mix of screaming electro and chantable stadium tracks, and just a dash of string section.

The very first track is a clear example of this, the band’s fondness for chorus, guitars, and beats you can dance to working well as background to "Let’s Roll Just Like We Used To", a track reminiscent of vocalist Tom Meighan’s childhood alongside guitarist Sergio Pizzorino. Ominous humming set with  far-distant trumpets paints a sun-drenched scene, and this combined with the punchy vocals and crunchy guitars of "Days Are Forgotten" provides an energetic opening to the album.

From here, the ten-track album loses its energy somewhat. We can wander happily past songs of summer romance and drunken drowsiness, but aside from the title track "Velociraptor!", whose choppy guitars and chant-screams promise to be at an Indie club night near you soon, songs are more lethargic than you might expect. Kasabian are far from dinosaurs themselves- at just over ten years old, and having never hit galactic levels of fame, the group still have some creative force left, but have now released an album which sounds like a watered down version of 2009’s explosive West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

As we meander through to the final track, the Neon Noon promised by the title is never delivered, and the song itself takes more than half its length to get off the ground at all. Throughout the album, Meighan’s insistence on ending each line with a drawn-out syllable makes lyrics whiny, and lets the words get lost in themselves. While this by no means makes a given song any less of a party track, it rather obscures the poetry we expect to be there, and creates a wash of sound punctuated by noisy drums.

Overall, a good set of songs from this well-loved band which won’t disappoint, but which is not their best work by a long shot.

[3/5]