The Cutting Edge of Youth

L.A. hardcore industrial duo Youth Code is touring in support of its second studio record, Commitment to Complications. With this record, Youth Code, featuring Sara Taylor and Ryan George, push deeper into the rough, serrated electronic territory of bands like Skinny Puppy, Godflesh and Ministry. 

This is not pleasant music, but it is thrilling, challenging and rewarding. Hardcore vocals accompany a throbbing, pulsating beat that almost inspires you to dance but instead hammers your consciousness into a brutal kind of awareness.

“With this new record we were just trying to keep pushing ourselves,” Taylor says, “trying to evolve and create our own take on the music we’ve been influenced by all of our lives — punk, industrial, techno.”

Taylor continues: “There’s an element to the newest record that we’ve been trying to grow in everything we’ve done since the first inception of the band. Both of us are very raw, visceral people,” she says, “and that really comes off in the music that we create.” 

Youth Code plays with Eugene thrash-metal band The Athiarchists 10 pm Thursday, May 26, at Hi-Fi Music Hall’s Hi-Fi Lounge; $10, 21-plus. — William Kennedy