In the event you took each single style of mosh-pit-geared music, chewed it up, and spit it again out, the ensuing wad would possibly sound one thing like Machine Woman. Gabber, hardcore punk, noise rock, trance, drum’n’bass, djent—so long as it’s arduous and quick, it’s truthful recreation for Matt Stephenson and Sean Kelly’s arsenal. Their music collectively performs just like the soundtrack to the ultimate boss stage of some finger-blistering bullet hell, Stephenson’s curdled screams clashing with Kelly’s battering-ram drums in an onslaught of cyberpunk sewage. Collectively they channel the pent-up vitality of an remoted technology reclaiming raves for themselves, and like their forebears in Atari Teenage Riot, they make aggressively dystopian albums that enjoy maximalism.
Their music is rarely extra alive than it’s at their concert events, the place Stephenson’s arcade-game sonics all mix right into a nightmarish barrage of tinnitus-inducing frequencies. On file, it’s trickier to translate. Although the 2 have dialed up their manufacturing high quality little by little, the music has largely settled into a well-recognized rhythm ever since 2017’s …BECAUSE I’M YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR. Following some high-profile gigs, together with touring with 100 gecs and soundtracking a first-person shooter recreation, their newest, MG Extremely, arrives by way of Future Basic, making Machine Woman labelmates with the likes of Flume—a profession transfer that would counsel the duo is trying to take its renegade routine to the following stage.
But whereas MG Extremely makes a couple of slight gestures at a extra polished model of Machine Woman, by and huge, it’s enterprise as normal right here, with Stephenson and Kelly hurtling by observe after overloaded observe. “Sick!!!” frequently ratchets up its hardcore assault: “I roll my ideas up and smoke them,” Stephenson howls in a paranoid panic, declaring himself “at conflict with the cerebral assassins” till the track lastly reaches an all-out gabber meltdown. It’s an amazing assault on the senses, however the fixed glut of results in the end finally ends up dragging the observe down, conserving it from hitting as arduous because it ought to.
Many of the album presents slight updates on Machine Woman’s M.O.: “Till I Die” imbues their normal drum’n’bass assault with cleaner vocals, whereas the jungly “Schizodipshit” particulars the nihilistic mindset of a blackpilled school-shooter kind. For all of the songs’ blunt impression, there’s a lot deal with cramming the midrange that any dynamics get misplaced within the course of. “Motherfather” marks probably the most drastic new course, incorporating a sluggish, grungy guitar refrain for a rallying cry towards upset dad and mom in all places. “Motherfather/Motherfather/I’m not your boy/Motherfather/Motherfather/Why did you trouble in any respect?” Stephenson howls; you’ll be able to virtually see him slamming a door coated in Serial Experiments Lain posters of their faces. The glitchy electronics of the verses are too disconnected from all the pieces else to fully work, but it surely does carve out new area in Machine Woman’s angsty universe.
