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So I have a regex like this -

[\w\s.<>/]* is [boom|box|cat]+[\w\s<>/]+[fun|lame][\w\s<>./]*

but this matches 

<something>things/something> is brah <HELLO>loc</HELLO> suburb.

why?

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[...] is a character class, it will match any individual character between the brackets, i.e. your [boom|box|cat] is identical to [abcotx|]. You want (boom|box|cat) and (fun|lame).

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but doesn't that mean I capture those words? I don't want to capture them
Yes, they happen to capture things. You don't have to use the backreference if you don't want to.
IF you're very concerned about the capturing (for whatever reason) you can use a non-capturing group and do (?: ... ) instead of ( ... )

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