Crushingly industrialized experimental outfit Youth Code are officially back.
Four years on from the EBM duo’s joint album with King Yosef, A Skeleton Key in the Doors of Depression, and five years on from their last non-collaborative release, the 2020 single “Puzzle,” Youth Code have announced a new EP, Yours, With Malice, which arrives later this spring. But to whet your electronics-mangled appetites, they’ve also just fired off a fiery first single called “No Consequence.”
The new track is full of hard-pounded mechano-beats and psyche-squelching synth-bass sounds, above which vocalist Sara Taylor flexes a series of furious screams around disloyalty, eroded bonds and more (“Try to pretend that we are cordial, splendid/A gaping wound of which we never mended”).
Up above you’ll find a music video for the energized and angsty new tune, which finds Hazmat-suited bandmates Taylor and Ryan George hopping and howling through the number inside a strobe-lit cube. A bunch of car crash visuals are added for good measure.
A press release notes that Yours, With Malice will be issued through new label home Sumerian Records. The five-song release is said to have followed a period of “deep introspection,” and they took their time putting it all together. Some of its ideas apparently date back to pre-COVID times.
“I think a lot of people’s stories during the pandemic were about self-reflection, but the ironic thing is we were already in a state of reemergence and re-imagination of self before the rest of the world was forced to do it,” George commented, adding that the group “never stop writing and are sitting on a mountain of tracks that we can rework and tweak.”
That said, he noted that linking up with Sumerian “sort of ignited a fire and got us to where we are now.”
The record is additionally said to reflect influences like Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Front 242, Cabaret Voltaire and more, while Taylor apparently further explores the melodic side of her vocals, which began more prominently in their A Skeleton Key in the Doors of Depression era.
Yours, With Malice is due out May 16th and available for pre-order on exclusive “purple bone & olive twist” vinyl at Revolver’s shop.
Yours, With Malice tracklisting:
No Consequence
Wishing Well
In Search of Tomorrow
Make Sense
I’m Sorry