Los Angeles duo, Youth Code, are one of the few artists to receive praise for reviving the industrial/EBM music of the late 1980s that never achieved its full potential. Tours with AFI, Skinny Puppy and Chelsea Wolfe accompanied each of their previous three albums, yet Yours, With Malice is their first release for four years, and it’s an EP. Is it worth the wait?
It seems harsh to criticise industrial music for having no songwriters other than a certain native of Pennsylvania who moved to Cleveland in the early 1980s. Do we dismiss hardcore in the same way? What about shoegaze music? Or black metal? Maybe it’s because the artists in this genre make electronics the focal point of their sound. We wonder: can they use those sonics to find melodies that are harder to extract from distorted guitars? Yet Youth Code might not see this as important. Their roots are in punk and metal.
Off-pitch synth notes and hard beats fly into a claustrophobic attack in ‘No Consequence’ like Ministry minus the metal guitars. Sara Taylor’s voice is just as abrasive as Al Jourgensen. Here, electronic snares poke like a boxer’s defence jab aiming for your ribs. The electro bass squelches in the mix like Skinny Puppy upgrading their equipment from the 1980s. There’s a lot happening, yet Taylor fires more lyrics at the listener than anything else, many of which burn under the intensity of a vague self-loathing masquerading as sarcasm (“I’ll take what’s been given / I’ll keep moving on”).
Youth Code make it clear they don’t want to rip off Nitzer Ebb. To be fair, they use the electronics at their disposal with more imagination that the English legends. The kick-snare drum combinations in ‘Wishing Well’ belong in the world of rock and metal rather than dance music. Perhaps Taylor could be more adventurous with her vocal phrasing. She sticks to the same deadpan shouting technique as if moving her right arm in the steering wheel motion to keep pace with the beats. “I’m holding out for the fairytale ending / I want so badly to believe it so,” is another ironic lyric that emerges with maximum angst.
The duo approach this EP like a hardcore band that had their guitars stolen and needed to replace them with synths and software. But they could make better use of the high-register synth presets at their disposal rather than using the low end to dominate. When they do this in ‘In Search of Tomorrow’, it sounds like a darkwave band from the 1980s toying around with Front Line Assembly’s technology. It’s hard to reconcile the celestial keyboard melody with the aggressive beats. Likewise, ‘Make Sense’ raises the question: Is there anybody other than Trent Reznor who can produce anthemic songs using these tools? The lack of imagination in the vocals and persistence in shouting the words in the same rhythm becomes tedious. No doubt, it’ll be much more visceral and exciting among a live audience seething with self-disgust and anger.
Those that waited four years might wonder why Youth Code could not produce an album instead of an EP, especially for a genre of music that’s often a studio-driven endeavour. Closing track, ‘I’m Sorry’, is what Ministry would sound like if they retained their synth pop from 1983’s With Sympathy and combined it with 1986’s harder-edged Twitch LP. The quirky high-end synth motifs work well with the droning bass notes. Hissing pistons belch and release steam underneath Taylor’s hardcore approach, but you wonder how much better it’d be with a different vocal style for at least one of the five songs on this record.
JVB
Verdict
Release Date: 16/05/2025
Record Label: Sumerian Records
Standout tracks: No Consequence; I’m Sorry
Suggested Further Listening: Ministry – Twitch (1986), Nitzer Ebb – Showtime (1991), The Defect – DEATH X DESTINY (2025)