Youth Code
Yours, With Malice
Sumerian Records
Even leaving the general state of the world at large at the door, dark music has undergone a couple of sea changes since the last time we had a proper stand-alone release from LA industrial dynamos Youth Code. Since 2015’s Commitment To Complications Berlin-styled TBM and pop/dancefloor focused darkwave have taken up a massive amount of oxygen in clubs and online (this site included), pushing the sort of abrasive hybrid of EBM and electro-industrial which has always been Youth Code’s sound back to the margins. Perhaps their 2021 collaboration with post-hardcore noise merchant King Yosef makes even more sense in that light, as do their tours with the likes of Code Orange – crowds hardwired for punk and metal are more likely to be on Sara Taylor and Ryan George’s wavelength than those drawn in by Mareaux or Boy Harsher.
Regardless of the recent past, Youth Code’s new EP Yours, With Malice is exactly the sort of reintroduction the broader industrial world needs to Youth Code and the sort of distillation of their strengths long-term fans would hope for. The stuttering, stabbing bass which falls in and out of sync with the drums of opener “No Consequence” is classic Youth Code going right back to their demo days, and “Wishing Well” (not a Terrence Trent D’Arby cover, for what it’s worth) gets over via the sort of subtle swing and funk vintage electro-industrial camouflages within its bricolage.
The changes, such as they are, that Yours, With Malice shows are generally minor production and arrangement tweaks which bring all of the density you’d expect in Youth Code’s most cacophonic and dense tracks into clarity. The whiplash shifts between glitchy beats and more propulsive and straightforward kicks on “In Search Of Tomorrow” feels seamless, and the details in the distorted textures of “Wishing Well” (and really the entire EP) feel more clearly parsable than they might have in the past without sacrificing grit. That consideration’s carried over thematically, too, with “Make Sense” knowing when to have the shuddering drums to drop out and leave the icy disaffection of the programming to match Taylor’s exhausted desperation, or in how the slightly less aggressive, dark electro styled synths which emerge in the second half of closer “I’m Sorry” underscore Taylor seeming to aim her vitriol inward in the EP’s final minutes.
Youth Code’s arrival in 2013 crystalized a sense of dissatisfaction with stale North American legacy acts and the diminishing returns of a club and remix-focused European ecosystem and heralded a new wave of rough and uncompromising EBM and industrial. While the landscape of 2025 is quite different, Yours, With Malice feels like an equally welcome disruption. Times change, Youth Code don’t, and thank fuck for that. Recommended.
