Review: Boss Keloid’s Melted on the Inch

Boss Keloid’s previous offering, Herb Your Enthusiasm, was an album that was obviously pretty comfortable with just being another stoner metal offering and sometimes if you enjoy a genre enough then you’re happy to riff on established tropes and not explore much else to set you apart. With their follow-up, Melted on the Inch, Boss Keloid make a conceited effort to not be just another stoner band and put forward one of the most difficult to define and progressive records ever.

Melted on the Inch is such a drastic step-up in musicianship that it’s bizarre to think this is the same band. We’ve had some tweaks to the band’s line-up since the last record with original bassist Liam Pendlebury-Green returning, but the most significant change is the addition of Matthew Milne on keyboards. Milne adds extra atmospherics and depth to Boss Keloid’s music, with his dreamy melodies adding a spacy, floaty quality to the soundscape.

Speaking of soundscape, tracks like Peykruve really do help conjure up images of vast, barren landscapes. Boss Keloid’s music has a wonderful lilting quality to it as it gently sways between dreamy space-rock passages accompanied with Alex Hurst’s bluesy vocals and groovy, thunderous riffs. It’s the sort of music you can’t help but move to.

The song-writing really does deserve a special mention here because Boss Keloid constantly ask you to commit to 7 minute epics, but thanks to the sheer amount of grooves, technicality and constantly evolving melodies on display it never feels like padding. There might be only 6 songs on this album but those 6 songs contain so many ideas and creativity that they’re actually disguising the music contained within.

With Melted on the Inch, Boss Keloid have evolved from, “just another stoner band” to, “prog-sludge behemoths”. Melted on the Inch is such a confident and experimental release that anyone who is a fan of the slower, groovier side of metal will be doing their record collection a massive disservice if they don’t pick up this album.

9/10

Boss Keloid’s Melted on the Inch is out now and available to buy through Holy Roar Records.