Machine Girl
MG Ultra
FUTURE CLASSIC
The funny thing about internet subcultures is that they often become semi-mainstream spheres. Machine Girl is a strong case study for this: initially an underground solo endeavor for Matt Stephenson, the project’s breakthrough 2014 debut WLFGRL spanned the gamut of cult sounds, from kinetic gabber to aggressive bass throbs to horror movie samples. With time and evolution in a post-internet music landscape, Machine Girl’s reach and influence has put them in league with acts like 100 gecs, whose genre anarchism mirrors the irreverence of their listeners. As Stephenson started throwing barrages of screamed vocals into the mix and brought on Sean Kelly for live percussion, the ROM-hack-fast freneticism of it all only compounded.
Now signed to Future Classic, Machine Girl set their sights on expanding their ethos as far as it can reach. True to its namesake, MG Ultra is a mad cocktail of everything that could reasonably fit under the Machine Girl umbrella: nu-metal sneers, industrial sludge rock, pure electropunk angst. If there’s any catch, though, it’s that the range grows about as much as the project’s bite is neutered. Where the cover art of WLFGRL invoked an imminent rabid gash—looking no less scuzzy than bootleg VHS tapes of splatter films—MG Ultra feels perhaps a little too homogenous for its own good.
The cross-section of bullet-shell beat and woozy synths on opener “Until I Die” makes for a strong start, coalescing into a hook that hits like an MDMA-infused rallying cry. “Nu Nu Meta Phenomena” carries that momentum well, its throat-shredding screams selling the commanding delirium Stephenson and Kelly seek to cultivate. But if these tracks seem like a euphoric high right at the top of the album, the crash quickly follows. Both “Sick!!!” and “Just Because You Can” sacrifice Machine Girl’s disarming knack for melody amid the chaos, prioritizing a more one-note sense of attitude. The effect is as dizzying as shoving dozens of fun-size candy bars into a single bite and reckoning with the sugar-rush headache that follows.
MG Ultra best succeeds when it wisely swerves toward the band’s cleaner side, with enough conviction and confidence to sell the duo as a bizarro noise-pop group. “Motherfather” maximizes this to subversive effect, weaving out of its breakbeat verses into a hair metal ballad chorus like a glitchier riff on Sleigh Bells. “Cicadas” trades in griminess for something closer to a gabber edit of Mario Kart music, Stephenson doing their best nightcore ohGr impression via nasally vocal pinches and clarion calls. These moments elucidate Machine Girl’s truest lineage, acting as the next generation of caustic Myspace-core outcast aggrotech, filtered through layers of pseudo-datamoshing.
These various approaches toward evolution come to a head on penultimate track “Schizodipshit,” an apparent glimpse into school shooter psychology that crams bass-heavy jungle rumbles, drill injunctions, and even a gear shift of an ambient pop bridge. Amid all that is a softer coda, with Stephenson chanting, “Everything’s permitted, and nothing is true,” lobbed as a sinister invocation of the thin line that can set anyone on this path. It’s also a peek into the potentials and limitations of Machine Girl: when everything is permitted, it becomes easier to permit too much of everything to seep through.
