Band:	Boss Keloid
Album:	Family The Smiling Thrush
Style:	Progressive sludge metal, Progressive stoner metal
Release date:	June 2021

01. Orang Of Noyn
02. Gentle Clovis
03. Hats The Mandrill
04. Smiling Thrush
05. Cecil Succulent
06. Grendle
07. Flatt Controller

Whoever thought that progressive sludge could sound so joyous?

Me. I thought. Because I have listened to Boss Keloid's previous album, 2018's Melted On The Inch. In fact, I reviewed it and it ended up being one of my favorite albums of that year, whether prog/sludge or not. There's something really fantastic in the way that Boss Keloid take their name from an Iron Monkey song and the skeleton of their genre fusion from Mastodon and their song titles from what I can only assume is a random word generator, and the end result never fails to put a dumb smile on my face.

What I mean by that is that Boss Keloid's music is definitely music that is to be taken seriously, and the musicians themselves definitely take it pretty seriously, but not without infusing it with such a prevalent sense of playfulness. Sure, a lot of it stems from the vocals themselves, which are admittedly gigantic and so so charismatic, but that sense is infused in the rest of the band themselves, and I can't dismiss the feeling that the band genuinely had a lot of fun making this record. Which I hope they did, regardless of how the record shows that. With this being another Boss Keloid album to be released on a different label than it's predecessor, as the band have previously released on Pipelord Records, Black Bow Records, Holy Roar Records, and now Ripple Music; I can only hope that this will be the last time I'll wish Boss Keloid were a bigger band.

I can't say there's that big of a difference from Melted On The Inch. The production certainly is even fuller, making everything feel impactful in the mix despite how cramped that would usually sound in the hands of a less skilled producer. But what made Boss Keloid great still makes them great on Family The Smiling Thrush: Alex Hurst's commanding vocal presence, which will probably endlessly draw comparisons to Clutch's Neil Fallon; the late 60s psychedelic rock vibes that get mixed with the fat stoner sludge sounds; the progressive and intricate way that these sounds are put into shape. Some parts of it maybe more prevalent on this record, like some of the riffs do punch quite hard, or the record opening with its longest song in a progressive journey. Mostly, it's just honing what was already great.