Keloid noun – an area of irregular fibrous tissue formed at the site of a scar or injury
Boss adjective – really cool
Boss Keloid – a really cool scar. Also a sludge/groove/stoner/other metal band from Wigan.
When their promo dropped into my mailbox I saw the “sludge” label and popped it to one side as, honestly, downtuning guitars to the point where you could step on the strings really doesn’t do it for me. However, due to the fact that their PR lady is a) wonderful and b) deeply pregnant I thought the least I could do was give it a listen and see how things went so she knew that something was being done while she underwent the whole “watermelon / small hole” experience.
And once again I’ve proven to myself that I shouldn’t pay any bloody attention to the genre labels that are on albums that come in. Boss Keloid are, indeed, downtuned but they’re not string-hammering, distortion-maxing, ear-splitting dullness. Hell no. They’re doomy. They’re rhythmical. They’re choral (listen to some of the singing in opener “Lung Mountain” which is embedded below). They’re good.
Herb Your Enthusiasm is their second album and is being released by Black Bow Records on April 8th. Black Bow are making a name for themselves, focussing on the heavier end of the spectrum and Boss Keloid are a great g for them. This is music you can headbang to. This is music you should headbang to. Slowly. And with ion.
The majority of the tracks are above five minutes with a couple of exceptions, and the album comes across more as a collection of music than a bunch of songs. One track oozes into another providing a near-continuous hour of brain melting heaviness. There are moments of clean but downtuned grit (such as the opening to “Cone” or the peaceful beginnings to “Lung Valley”), followed by heavy as hell distorted head-crushing (the short instrumental “Highatus” as well as a lot of the rest of the album).
What it never is, though, is boring. And that’s what in all honesty I was expecting. Hand on heart, I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed this album and it has ended up having far more listens than I’d have anticipated.
One of these days I’ll learn not to judge a book album by its blurb and instead judge it by listening to it. Talking about books (almost), though, credit must also be given to the artist who worked on the 6- digipak sleeve. It’s fantastic in all its fold-out glory.
Boss Keloid: facebook | twitter | bandcamp | bigcartel
