In the event you took each single style of mosh-pit-geared music, chewed it up, and spit it again out, the ensuing wad may sound one thing like Machine Woman. Gabber, hardcore punk, noise rock, trance, drum’n’bass, djent—so long as it’s onerous and quick, it’s honest sport for Matt Stephenson and Sean Kelly’s arsenal. Their music collectively performs just like the soundtrack to the ultimate boss degree 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 era reclaiming raves for themselves, and like their forebears in Atari Teenage Riot, they make aggressively dystopian albums that experience maximalism.
Their music isn’t 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-known 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 sport, their newest, MG Extremely, arrives through Future Basic, making Machine Woman labelmates with the likes of Flume—a profession transfer that would recommend the duo is trying to take its renegade routine to the subsequent degree.
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 common right here, with Stephenson and Kelly hurtling by means of monitor after overloaded monitor. “Sick!!!” frequently ratchets up its hardcore assault: “I roll my ideas up and smoke them,” Stephenson howls in a paranoid panic, declaring himself “at struggle with the cerebral assassins” till the tune lastly reaches an all-out gabber meltdown. It’s an awesome assault on the senses, however the fixed glut of results finally finally ends up dragging the monitor down, retaining it from hitting as onerous because it ought to.
A lot of the album gives slight updates on Machine Woman’s M.O.: “Till I Die” imbues their common 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 route, incorporating a sluggish, grungy guitar refrain for a rallying cry towards disenchanted dad and mom in all places. “Motherfather/Motherfather/I’m not your boy/Motherfather/Motherfather/Why did you hassle in any respect?” Stephenson howls; you’ll be able to virtually see him slamming a door lined in Serial Experiments Lain posters of their faces. The glitchy electronics of the verses are too disconnected from every part else to fully work, however it does carve out new area in Machine Woman’s angsty universe.