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 arduous 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 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 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 document, 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 sport, their newest, MG Extremely, arrives by way of Future Basic, making Machine Woman labelmates with the likes of Flume—a profession transfer that might counsel the duo is trying to take its renegade routine to the subsequent stage.
But whereas MG Extremely makes just a few slight gestures at a extra polished model of Machine Woman, by and huge, it’s enterprise as traditional 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 warfare with the cerebral assassins” till the track lastly reaches an all-out gabber meltdown. It’s an awesome assault on the senses, however the fixed glut of results in the end finally ends up dragging the monitor down, holding it from hitting as arduous because it ought to.
Many of the album gives slight updates on Machine Woman’s M.O.: “Till I Die” imbues their traditional drum’n’bass assault with cleaner vocals, whereas the jungly “Schizodipshit” particulars the nihilistic mindset of a blackpilled school-shooter sort. For all of the songs’ blunt impression, there’s a lot give attention to cramming the midrange that any dynamics get misplaced within the course of. “Motherfather” marks essentially the most drastic new course, incorporating a gradual, grungy guitar refrain for a rallying cry in opposition to disillusioned mother and father in every single place. “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 thing else to fully work, however it does carve out new house in Machine Woman’s angsty universe.
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