For those who 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 Lady. Gabber, hardcore punk, noise rock, trance, drum’n’bass, djent—so long as it’s onerous 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 power 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 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 report, it’s trickier to translate. Although the 2 have dialed up their manufacturing high quality little by little, the music has principally 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 recreation, their newest, MG Extremely, arrives by way of Future Traditional, making Machine Lady labelmates with the likes of Flume—a profession transfer that might recommend the duo is making an attempt 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 Lady, by and enormous, it’s enterprise as typical right here, with Stephenson and Kelly hurtling by way 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 music 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, preserving it from hitting as onerous because it ought to.
Many of the album affords slight updates on Machine Lady’s M.O.: “Till I Die” imbues their typical 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 influence, there’s a lot deal with cramming the midrange that any dynamics get misplaced within the course of. “Motherfather” marks essentially the most drastic new route, incorporating a gradual, grungy guitar refrain for a rallying cry towards disillusioned dad and mom in every single place. “Motherfather/Motherfather/I’m not your boy/Motherfather/Motherfather/Why did you trouble in any respect?” Stephenson howls; you may 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 the whole lot else to fully work, however it does carve out new area in Machine Lady’s angsty universe.