Ask 10 people for the best way to describe fuzz-rock band Melt and nine of them likely will talk about the Pittsburgh trio’s thunderous volume.

Just ask Jacob Gardner.

Earlier this summer, the South Side resident and part-time punk bassist discovered Melt while scrolling through websites, searching for concerts to attend. He trekked to Brillobox July 8 to celebrate the streaming release of Melt’s sophomore LP, “Replica of Man.”

“My first impressions? I was blown away — they are pretty damn loud,” laughed Gardner, 31, who moved to Pittsburgh from Erie right before the covid-19 pandemic.

“Their album, ‘Replica of Man,’ it immediately became that five-star favorite album for me,” he added. “I can listen to it from beginning to end and not get bored with it.”

Gardner will join other fans Friday night when Melt performs live at Bottlerocket Social Hall, 1226 Arlington Ave., Allentown, to celebrate the release of its second LP — on vinyl.

Doors open at 7 p.m. Admission is $10 in advance or $15 at the door.

Melt says there was a plan from the get-go.

Joey Troupe met James May in January 2020 at Belvedere’s, an infamous dive bar on Lawrenceville’s Butler Street, to sketch out a band sound they wanted to be heavier than Troupe’s previous effort, garage-rockers Paddy The Wanderer.

Two months later, the world shut down, crippled by covid-19. Melt kept moving forward.

Sometime after releasing Melt’s self-titled debut on July 6, 2021, J.J. Young replaced Ian Tepper on drums and everything started falling into place, Troupe said.

“I like a lot of other types of music but I’ve thought, ‘Maybe this is the kind of band or the kind of music I was meant to play,’” said Troupe, 38, of Shadyside, the Punxsutawney-area native who fronts Melt. “The visceral heaviness of the music, really feeling it push through your ears and veins and bones — there’s an unquestionable feeling of weight, of the groove of it all.”

Melt can sound unquestionably heavy, calling to mind Black Sabbath, as well as the bottom-heavy Sturm und Drang of contemporaries like Sunn O))), Boris or Earth.

But Troupe’s love of radio-ready bands like The White Stripes and The Black Keys also shines right through in his guitar hooks, which frequently dance with unexpected melodies.

If it’s hooks you’re seeking, though, Melt’s got a big conceptual one you need to know about: they’ve embraced an outer space theme. Troupe, May and Young perform each live show in astronaut suits. The band projects space-themed videos onto the walls of the venues they play. Inflatable aliens and costumed dancers often grace the stage.

The trio even leans into the conceit in promotional material.

“A cosmic opus is nigh, and mission control has finalized flight plans for a sonic expedition of historic proportions,” the band posted to Instagram to promote Friday’s show. “Prepare to #getmelted.”

The extra-terrestrial obsessiveness serves as a throwback to the very first song on Melt’s first LP, “Alien Parade,” Troupe said.

“There’s the idea of this music taking you to another realm of existence and helping you get out of the doldrums of your world, the Venn diagram of all these circles being space,” Troupe laughed.

“The kind of general schtick of the band is that we don’t want to just provide people with some heavy tunes, we want to provide an experience,” said drummer Young, 27, of Pittsburgh’s South Hills. “Lighting? Costumes? Not much is off-limits to Melt.”

At the center of Young’s Venn diagram, however, sits Led Zeppelin legend John Bonham: an obvious influence for a drummer who seems to punch out his percussive beats.

“He’s the most influential,” Young said. “There’s him, and then there’s everybody else.”

May’s bass influences include some more obvious ones — Rush and Yes, for example, in addition to staples like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. When asked about his bass sound, though, he recalls the first time he heard the Primus song “Jerry Was A Race Car Driver” at age 12 or 13.

“It blew my mind! I said, ‘I need to know what this is!’” laughed May, 36, of Troy Hill, who grew up in the Laurel Highlands. “Without finding Primus, I wouldn’t be a musician. I’d just be a music lover.”

Each member of the band sings vocals and helps sculpt the band’s songs. May’s delivery on the four-string calls to mind metal heroes Mastodon — another influence, he said. But May admits he also has a soft spot for Norwegian black metal.

“It’s my dream to write my solo black metal album — in a cave, in winter, while I freeze,” May said. “You know, very bleak and dismal.”

Melt also likes its recordings to benefit from the environment in which they’re captured to audiotape. The trio trekked with engineer Nate Campisi to a remote cabin hours north of Pittsburgh to record ‘Replica of Man.’

Campisi recorded just about everything live over the course of four days. Melt overdubbed “a couple guitars” and “a few vocals here and there” after the fact at Mr. Smalls Recording and Mastering Studio on the North Side, he said.

“They wanted it to be way heavier than I imagined,” said Campisi, 39, of Spring Hill. “I imagined the audio just destroyed, just really heavy, really juiced up. That was the goal: to make it as heavy as possible.”

To get Melt’s desired fuzz-rock sound, Campisi said he’d crank up the audio saturation levels and work to distort things “both before and after the microphones.”

“I think their sound is awesome — it’s really full and pedal-to-the-metal,” said Campisi, who’s worked this year with Pittsburgh bands like Sweat and Blinder. “They really let me do what I wanted, as long as it was full and heavy. The further I pushed it, the more they liked it.”

Now, the members of Melt are looking forward to their fans hearing them on vinyl, which some audiophiles say has a warmer, more organic timbre to it. The ‘Replica of Man’ pressing available at Friday’s show will be each member’s debut on wax.

Troupe remembers gathering at his home with May and Young to give a first listen to the test pressing of the LP.

“It was a borderline spiritual experience,” Troupe said. “To set the stylus down and hear our own music come out, it was amazing. There’s just something more, I don’t know, tangible, nostalgic about having it on vinyl.”

The band already is hard at work on record #3.

“We’re really excited for what’s to come for us,” Young said. “We’re in the process of writing new tunes and we’re honored with how people have responded to ‘Replica of Man.’”

“I’m sure I could apply some space theme to that,” he added, “but I guess I’m not that good on my feet!”

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