Some might be scared away by the abrasive nature of Machine Girl, but the ugly sludge of music genres is what makes their tunes so beautiful. Since the project’s debut in 2012, Matt Stephenson and Sean Kelly have rocked the rave with barbaric rage. 

Machine Girl started as Stephenson’s electronic solo act, but he felt his music could be louder, prompting the recruitment of his metal-obsessed childhood friend. Stephenson screamed at the top of his lungs in the 2014 album

“BECAUSE I’M YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR,” marking the duo’s descent into mayhem. 

The album’s opening song, named after its title, invites the listener with rising electronic taps culminating into a robotic introduction: Machine Girl. After that, they’re thrown into the deep end:

“FOLLOW ME, FOR ALL THE INSANITY. SETTLE FOR THE OTHER THINGS, GOLDEN STUFF INSIDE OF ME, FINALLY.” 

Instruments fade in a wavy slosh. The rebellious lyrics overpower the background noise, but coherence is lost in Stephenson’s screams. To end the track, he spits,

“SO PREPARE FOR WAR, BECAUSE I’M YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR.”

Every song afterward dives progressively deeper into the emotional depths. Stephenson’s rage is relentless, and his vocals are audible by virtue of how loud they are. 

There’s breathing room in calmer tracks such as 

“ATHOTH A GO!! GO!!”, characterized by distorted vocals and rock, but the song doesn’t forget which album it’s in. The music is still frenetic, even in Stephenson’s trance-like lament,

“TILL OUR BRAINS AND OUR GUTS SPLATTER ALL OVER THE F***ING SIDEWALK, TOGETHER.” 

Machine Girl’s rage comes from an inner melancholy.. 

These are songs about existential issues communicated through animalistic anger, and it couldn’t be more obvious in song titles such as

“IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLENIALS TO DESTROY A NATION OF MILLIONS…”

Their album’s most frantic song, 

(translated to UZUMAKI, which then translates to 

SPIRAL), highlights the struggle with mental health. Listeners are hooked into the fray with its opening lines, 

“SPIRAL INTO INSANITY, WHILE ALL THESE DRUGS ARE CURING ME”. The lyrics reek of Stephenson’s anguish. In the song’s most chaotic sections, the lyrics are almost incoherent, warping into brown noise with its crescendo,

“AND THEN I FORGET EVERYTHING I WANT TO BE!” followed by an animalistic cry.

Near the end, the song becomes slower, but Stephenson gets personal.

“I’LL KILL MYSELF!” he cries. “NOT TODAY, NOT TODAY, NOT TODAY.” It goes on for so long the listener wonders when the madness will end. 

“Not today, not today, not today, not TODAY, NOT TODAY, NOT TODAY!” On and on, so much they begin to overlap. It perfectly demonstrates the rampage tearing through the listener’s eardrums.

No label can fit this album’s genre samples distorted beyond comprehension. Machine Girl revels in leaving its genre up to interpretation, “relentlessly smashing together bits of punk, grindcore, rave, industrial and more,” according to a Pitchfork review. 

The album itself is layered with instruments, and on repeat listens one can discern the synthesizers, drums and various electronic instruments used to organize the chaos.

Machine Girl encourages its listeners to get lost in the songs, for the amount of emotion poured into the composition makes its music pop.

Behind every lyric is a lifetime of sorrow and wrath. Catchiness comes second, and sometimes it’s the result of Stephenson screeching his pain in syncopated repetition. 

 “BITTEN TWICE” repeats the lyric “DON’T BE BITTEN TWICE” over 30 times, highlighting the song’s themes about dodging hurt in its 2 minutes and 30 seconds of heavy percussion.

Wild lyrics are matched with outlandish instrumentals. “F*** UP YOUR FACE” follows a similar track of “BITTEN TWICE” but it repeats its title over a hazy ode to self-harm.

Some of the album’s most popular songs contain bridges that lend themselves to instrumental overloads. In the opening song, Stephenson screams,

“A FLASH IN THE PAN, A SMACK IN THE FACE, KILL THE WORLD WITH WHATEVER IT TAKES!” Electronic syncopation follows, its high chords and taps making it sound heavenly by design. It’s not a synthesizer gone haywire, but rather multiple instruments coming together in this outburst. Then, the listener’s eardrums shatter, 

“FOLLOW ME, FOR ALL THE INSANITY.”

Machine Girl is often impossible to hear, but the emotions rippling throughout make their influence subliminal. Those who choose to question the madness will often find themselves more infatuated with it.

Simply writing about Machine Girl’s composition is a disservice to how great they are. 

One should experience the craziness to believe it. While this music is not for everyone,

“BECAUSE I’M YOUNG ARROGANT AND HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR” evokes listeners to look deeper into the music and not just the lyrics.