Review Summary: Carefully crafted chaos.
Groove, melody, and dissonance are elements that don’t always work with each other. Now imagine an album where each are pushed to their extreme (especially dissonance), and thrown into a blender. Each is forced to work together in its own eccentric way, and now it’s up to songwriting to sort out the mess. If songwriting wasn't a master at its craft, then everything would fall apart like a slop. This is Taking Umbrage.
Yowie is a band that's been very unique in math rock. While they have been shy to show groove, they have been very happy to soak their songs in all types of dissonance. On their previous album, Synchromysticism, they flirted with groove with a small handful of riffs throughout their songs. Here, the relationship is full blown and fully in their sound. Riffs morph and change quickly, and just as you start to get comfortable the band is falling apart at the seams.
The band is noticeably heavier, too. The bass presence is even more infectious than before, and more downtuned. Their signature guitar tone is on overdrive, very rarely doing anything that’s not some type of dissonance. Yowie's drummer, Defestanator, is the last line of defense when it comes to making this all work, and even he allows things to go a little off the rails.
I’ll be real with you. Yowie has taken over 20 years and a revolving door of band changes to perfect their sound. This is almost certainly their best. While each of their albums is crazy in their own way, this feels like the best balance between structure and chaos. Each multi-year wait between albums has always been worth it, and this is their best one yet.
A review doesn't quite do the insanity of this album justice. Just listen to the whole thing, it’s on bandcamp.
