Boss Keloid – Family the Smiling Thrush (Review)

Boss Keloid are a progressive sludge metal band from the UK and this is their fifth album.

Family the Smiling Thrush contains 47 minutes of new material from the ever-welcome Boss Keloid. A shining light in the UK’s heavy music scene, I’ve enjoyed watching their development from 2016’s Herb Your Enthusiasm to 2018’s Melted on the Inch. Now they’ve returned, with the latest iteration of their distinctive, individual sound.

The band’s musical formula contains a lot of familiar ingredients – doom, prog, sludge, psychedelic, stoner – but brewed in such a way as to be refreshing and unexpected. Well, unexpected if this is your first encounter with Boss Keloid’s infectious brand of colourful heaviness. If you have been keeping tabs on the band, then Family the Smiling Thrush is the next logical step in the band’s evolution.

Boss Keloid’s progressive tendencies are given even freer rein across these seven tracks, and the results speak loudly for themselves. Each song is a multifaceted world unto itself, packed with unusual sights to see and savour. It almost sounds as if 70s progressive rock and modern sludge metal were smashed together, left in the dirt, and then from the remains has been grown something wonderful and new. That’s Boss Keloid on Family the Smiling Thrush.

Effortlessly emotive and melodically rich, these new songs are strikingly wrought and hard to ignore. The band’s powerful singer is better than ever, and the recording and production are perfectly delivered. Boss Keloid’s development is great to see, and the hard work that’s gone into Family the Smiling Thrush has more than paid off.

Family the Smiling Thrush is Boss Keloid at their resplendent best.

Essential listening.