Yowie – Taking Umbrage (SkinGraft Records) – Hey look, you don’t need to read this, you don’t need an album review, you know the score, you know we only cover things we really think are worth covering, just cut to the damn chase and listen to the music down there, what are all these words worth? Here’s a bit from the press release: “Yowie play a dense foreign language through two guitars which communicate in an angry six string banter over strictly scattered drums. This power trio speaks in alien code that’s never fully deciphered. Daniel Kennedy (Cleric) and Jack Tickner (Basil’s Kite) now join founding member Defenestrator on the band’s 4th album”  

Now do we need to get forensic about this? I mean, if it is dancing around architecture again, then it is (very) awkwardly so, it is with elbows out and going off and things, it is all these crows be picking at my flesh and I’ve got no control over the situation. No no no, that crows picking at your flesh all make it sound like an unpleasant experience, this new Yowie album is an absolute head-messing delight! This new line up are still very much Yowie and okay, I admit, there are days when I put it on and no, away with your packing! There are days when really all this pecking at my head is too much, bit then there are other days, most days, glorious days when the pecking is a delight and on those days, most days, this is brilliant. Now I haven’t got time for all post-this or math-that that or what ever little musical box needs to be applied here, I’m not hear for music nerdery, bottom line is this is just damn good music – hard-boiled head scratching challenging music but no one ever said challenging isn’t a good thing, who wants an easy ride? That bit there sounds like a seagull who wants more than just a diet of stolen seafront chips, Yowie are a seagull attack!  

Yowie are precise, they’re controlled, and as we have probably said around here before, they do sound like a Jackson Pollock painting, but but but, like Jackson, there is never anything unnecessaryunnesa know where every drip of paint needs to go, it is precision, it always considered and controlled, they are lean, no waste, nothing that doesn’t need to be there. Talking of Jackson and paintings, has anyone seen that yellow one with an apple on it, I sold it yesterday and Yowie are currently providing a frantic soundtrack while I search for it, where is that damn painting?  They do make for good searching music…    

Taking Umbrage is seriously hard-boiled, it is relentless, it does peck, and it is out this week (it feels like we have already covered it, it is out this week though, time to focus) Taking Umbrage doesn’t let up, maybe it is a little lacking in terms of a different texture or dimension? Maybe that’s actually a positive? It probably is, it is relentless, it certainly doesn’t feel like the work of a group of one trick ponies, Yowie, whoever is in the line up, have never been one trick ponies and that bit there sounds like a woodpecker at work. There is a lot pecking going on here, this is bird music. the pigeons like it, the pigeons always like it when we play Yowie in the studio. And yeah, I know, you want a serious review, you want me to stroke my chin and analyse it like some sort of self-appointed nerdy music critic, yeah, I know Yowie have “spent a quarter of a century bending avant-progressive rock into their own angular vocabulary, and their fourth album is…”  

Where were we? it is, as we have said before, “hyper-composed”, they really are hyper; “This band tortures rhythms until they reveal their most angular anti-groovy essence, and then we throw a grooved version of it down into the pit to antagonise the angular part.” as they told someone or other recently.

Put simply, Yowie have consistently been one of the most rewarding bands of this century, this may only be their fourth album over quite a long period of time but they pack so much in, to want more would be greedy. Yes they are “As challenging as it is infectious”  and I do like this quote on their Bandcamp page; “Frantically disorganized as ants sometimes appear there is always a purpose, a direction, a method in their apparent madness…” which really is a good job seeing as it is a quote they’ve used on their Bandcamp page is something apparently from an Organ review although we most certainly did not spell disorganised with a damn Z! Hang on, I’ve found the missing yellow painting, got to go to the post office… to be continued.

And so the fourth Yowie album is released tomorrow, the first Friday of October 2025 and today is Thursday, we need to get this up. All of Yowie’s albums are crucial, all are rewarding, each has a (slightly) different character, it is always Yowie, they are unmatched, it is an instantly recognisable approach, unnatural and counter intuitive at every turn, naturally so. Hypnotic, purely about playing with rhythm, you have to get into the zone with it the way they do themselves, it is almost a biological thing, when you do tune in, when your body adjusts to it all then there’s nothing quite like Yowie.       

“For Taking Umbrage, the ambition of the material demanded Yowie assemble an international line up with impeccable credentials. The band now features Daniel Kennedy (also of the band Cleric, which has its own progressive metal oeuvre, and has worked with the likes of John Zorn and Trey Spruance), as well as Jack Tickner (Basil’s Kite, Wollongong, and solo microtonal work), in addition to founding member, Defenestrator. Taking Umbrage is both the group’s longest album and the one that took the longest to create, and one listen will show listeners why. There is no fast-tracking Yowie’s meticulous approach to composition. Taking Umbrage raises the bar even higher, defying the boundaries of rock to forge a new path full of twists and turns that will challenge and excite aficionados of math rock, prog rock, RIO, extreme metal… and the outer limits and extremities of genres yet to be identified”

Another very fine Yowie album…. Bandcamp / SkinGraft

Pigeons, crows, seagulls, woodpeckers, and now there’s a Magpie doing that tommy gun thing thery do along to it….

And there’s a European tour

22.10.25 – BRUSSELS – Magasin 4 *
23.10.25 – LILLE Centre Culturel Libertaire
24.10.25 – LONDON – Strongroom
25.10.25 – AMIENS – Accueil froid
26.10.25 – PARIS La cantine de Belleville
28.10.25 – COPENHAGEN – Rahuset *
29.10.25 – HAMBURG – Hafenklang *
30.10.25 – BERLIN – K19 *
31.10.25 – GDANSK – Klub Zak *
1.11.25 – WOLOW – Nowa Forma Club *
2.11.25 – PRAGUE – Cafe V Lese *
3.11.25 – České Budějovice – Žižkárna
5.11.25 – GENEVE – La Cave
6.11.25 – LYON – Les Capucins
7.11.25 – BESANCON – Les Passagers Du Zinc
8.11.25 – KORTRIJK – Sonic City Festival

• Shows with MOJA

Previously:

ORGAN THING: Another very tasty taste of the rather tasty new Yowie album that we will get around to properly before it comes out in the first week of October. In the words of Mr Purple, come taste the band…

ORGAN THING: Taking Umbrage? Yes, it is hyper-composed rock and all that gibber and twitch, could Yowie be sounding even more hard-boiled and challenging then ever with this excellent new album?

ORGAN THING: Pili Coït and Yowie, a split album on Dur et Doux and SkinGraft Records – “Split? There’s nothing divisive about it”. Two highly recommended bands challenging both themselves and you and me with what surely will be one of the albums of the year when it comes to list these things…

ORGAN THING: That debut Terms album then, people from Grand Ulena, from Yowie, like Jackson Pollock feeding spiders down your ears…

ORGAN THING: We’re not done with the year yet, the new Basil’s Kite album just came out. Chewing Bread is incredibly clever on several levels, mathy, complex, hardcore, almost alien or maybe like some of those strange animals they got down there…