Youth Dekay

Goodbye Cruel World EP

Written by: TL on 26/04/2009 23:10:47

Next band on the menu for me tonight is also a young one, also having recently given birth to their first release. This band's name is Youth Dekay and I hope they will forgive me for using the "giving birth" metaphor, it was simply too tempting seeing how all three members of the band are female citizens of Chicago.

This first EP of theirs, called "Goodbye Cruel World", starts of an embodiment of the classical unnecessary sample-intro. 18 seconds of some music box being cranked and then that's it and I wonder: What's the point? Thankfully I'm not left with the question for long, as the first real song called "Stereo Pulse" kicks off with a shot of the band's most accurate weapon, namely a relatively tasty guitar riff of the most dirty and distorted kind. It quickly becomes apparent that the sound here is so raw and low-fi that there's not much to betray the feeling of a bedroom/garage recording, and unfortunately that might be something of a turn off to some.

Apart from the quite attitude-filled guitar licks, there's some rather simplistic drumming and bass work going on, and it suffices to say that those instruments do what they're supposed to and not too much beyond that. Then what's left is the vocals, and just as the production values, these could prove a polarizing trait at best. Mostly, the frontwoman resorts to menacing screaming in a very hardcore punk manner that reminds me mostly of a band such as Circus Circus, except you must imagine these screams to come from a girl who sounds a bit like she could've been in Le Tigre if she'd had some anger management classes - a feeling that is strengthened by the occasional mellow low pitched chanting parts.

In general I must admit that I have a hard time finding the appeal in this EP though. Like I've mentioned, songs like "Stereo Pulse" and "A Stand Still" have some relatively cool guitar parts, but beyond that, the raging screaming does sound a bit pretentious, and if I wasn't so cautious with dispensing gender discrimination, I'd probably say something about suspecting that these chicks are trying too hard to prove one thing or another. Whether this is the case or not though, they need to clean up their sound and start playing a bit more of the proverbial strings before I'll be one to hype them though.

4

Download: A Stand Still, Stereo Pulse
For The Fans Of: a screamo version of Le Tigre
Listen: myspace.com/youthdekay

Release Date: 2005, Re-issued in 2009
Piranha Recordz

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