Youth Code bring a distinctly industrial bent to punk music, and A Place to Stand both preps audiences for an upcoming sophomore record and gives a present state of the band. The four new songs and handful of remixes here reveal a band in flux, both upping the ante on their trademark punk aggression and moving away from the genre constraints they’ve already busted open. The results can be exciting, especially on “To Burn Your World”, where huge drums blow the song open and make the lean, grizzly hooks that follow and echo in the space left behind feel huge.
Spoken-word piece “A Litany (A Place to Stand)” also gives us another surprising place for the band’s clanging sound to go, and it manages to turn down the howl and still keep the anger up. The best of the remixes here show other genres Youth Code could bust down, namely hip-hop. These moments show where Youth Code could go, but the other stuff, even when it’s bracing, feels like it’s retreading ground the band has already covered. “Consuming Guilt” feels more frustrated than fruitful in its anger, and the other remixes mostly just up the industrial angle without changing the song at all. There are enough moments of curiosity to make this a decent holdover, but as a stand-alone EP, this set doesn’t quite find its own footing.