The overwhelming thought in my head at the beginning of that night was that sometimes all that you need is a pitch black, small room, friends and some harsh noise. Nothing hits harder than life – that was the motto around Youth Code‘s 2025 album Yours, With Malice and even though we’ve only seen twenty two days of this new year, I have already felt hit hard by life. Walking into that smoked up, dark room filled with like-minded strangers dressed in my familiar black and logos of bands that soundtrack my life, and finding among them friends that of course would have been there – that was what my grief-stricken self needed that night.
After the entrees served by Street Sect and King Yosef, the support acts on the Industrial Worship tour, Youth Code walked out onto the stage and proceeded to unleash their masterfully crafted industrial noise onto their fiercely loyal fanbase, and the strobing lights, the wall of noise and bodies moshing against one another was just the ticket we all seemed to have needed to start the year in live music (having chatted to many people during and after the gig, a lot of us picked Youth Code to be the first gig of the year).
It seems like The Internet has a thing for reminiscing 2016 right now, and Youth Code played into that by starting their set with tracks from their acclaimed 2016 LP Commitment To Complications and it didn’t take more than two songs for Sara Taylor to walk into the audience for a truly cathartic, communal experience during ‘Cursed’. She remarked how grateful she was to be back in London, “the birthplace of the best music”, and the energy of the crowd reciprocating the sentiment was palpable. We didn’t need encouragement to open up the mosh pits – they widened to welcome thrashing bodies, but what really struck me was the blissful smiles on people’s faces as they threw themselves against the warmth of others. That night Youth Codes’ arresting, confrontational noise was a form of self care and the industrial worship became a form of communion.
Sarah broke the noise to deliver a passionate speech:
How embarrassing it is to be American right now – it’s extremely humiliating, fucking sickening. Let’s be real about it – anywhere that has a system that oppresses people based on creed, sexual orientation, anything… Governments can suck my fucking shit!
And all of us in that room in London felt it – looking around me I could see people of all ages and races, people with pro-Palestine shirts and trans flags sewn onto their battle jackets. We all felt the pain of what it must feel to be American right now because whatever happens there always has ripple effects across the world, and the last few weeks in the news felt like a dystopian fever dream.
After ‘I’m Sorry’, one of the new songs, Youth Code invited Tayves Yosef Pelletier, the King Yosef vocalist, to the stage with another emotional speech from Sara. “Pandemic brought a sense of loss – I felt completely withdrawn, I was in the throes of my drinking and I called Tayves and his wife Anna and one day one of us suggested let’s do a record together – it’s one of my favourite pieces of music I’ve ever made.” That ended up becoming A Skeleton Key in the Doors of Depression and the gig finished with three songs from that EP, with Youth Code and King Yosef channelling depression into the healing power of music.
And just like that the night felt like a full circle – I came in in search for friends and harsh noise, and walked out after seeing friends make harsh noise together. I was one of the people coming out of that experience with a blissful smile on my face.
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