Album review: KOYO – Onism

Very much not to be confused with the Long Island hardcore band of the same name, this KOYO are alumni of the prestigious Leeds Conservatoire, with the musical chops to match. Only now getting back on track after this decade’s unfortunate start, their return sees them throw four years’ worth of ideas at their third record. It’s a tactic they pull off by the skin of their teeth.

Opening an album with a genuinely irritating track is certainly a bold move: if ever a riff could be said to be smug, it’s the first one you hear on La Cucaracha. Proceed beyond this fumble, however, and there is plenty to recommend across Onism’s 49 minutes. If their signature sound shares a certain progginess and groove with Supermassive Black Hole-era Muse, with shades of QOTSA at their quirkiest, this is far from the only direction in which they travel.

Instrumental space rock jam Dark Horse lends proceedings a cosmic dimension, just as Hooked and bonus track Existential Crisis inject a certain drama. Stoneman is by some distance the album’s most memorable tune, frontman Huw Edwards delivering its hooks with honeyed vocals that, in conjunction with sprightly basslines and prominent synths, border on yacht rock or funk-adjacent ’80s pop. A tacked-on spoken word coda feels like another misstep, though.

Similarly, Is This Real, which adopts similar sun-dappled nostalgia to Tame Impala, really doesn’t need to last over eight minutes - but it does boast an unexpectedly killer guitar solo. That’s Onism in a microcosm: (mostly) decent songs, played with real skill, sometimes over-reaching and coming a cropper, but ultimately deserving of your time.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Muse, Queens Of The Stone Age, Nothing But Thieves

Onism is self-released on November 1