I CAN FEEL IT IN MY HEAD!

Let me give you a scenario, okay? Please do your best to picture this in your mind. Ready?

So imagine you’re in the kitchen cooking up dinner. Your husband comes home from work holding a briefcase and you kiss him once on each cheek. “It’s crunch time,” he says, solemnly. “Boss isn’t giving us a break anytime soon.” You offer him some words of encouragement. The oven dings-- the meatloaf is done (your dear grandma’s recipe, passed down generations.) It looks dee-lightful! You call everyone to the table to sit down and enjoy this wonderful meal together. Have some good family time. The works. You notice that your child isn’t downstairs yet, so you go to check on them in their room.

You knock twice on the door then peer inside. Your child is slumped over the desk in an angle only achievable by breaking your spine thrice over. Their computer screen is the only thing that provides light, a torch in the otherwise damp, smelly, dark cavern. You spot a spent liter bottle of mountain dew on the floor, crumpled wrappers and stained clothes creating a minefield of involuntary celibacy.

“It’s time for dinner,” You say, tentatively. “The meatloaf is ready, dear.”

“Can’t, mom.” They say faintly, clearly occupied with something else. From the door, you hear the tinny sound of music blasting through their shitty speakers. What the fuck is that? Lawnmower funniest moments compilation #23469?

“Well, what’s so important that you’re giving up family time?” You say with an undercurrent of annoyance.

“I’m listening to Machine Girl,” They say.

Fuck. Fuck. This can’t be happening. You fiddle with the ties of your apron nervously. “That’s not quite music, dear.”

“Yes it is,” They encounter with vigor, but really, they’re really kind of unbothered about it. They’re winning the IDGAF wars. They’re only mad in a post-post-post-post ironic way. “You wouldn’t understand. It’s like, webcore, y’know? Like breakcore and weirdcore and old web?”

You’re shaking now, tears brimming at your eyes. When did this happen? How could you let this happen? The signs should’ve been apparent. You should’ve been more careful about this. Ever since they got into that Death Grips shit things haven’t been the same. It was Aphex twin after that. And then 100gecs. Gen-Z’ers are crazy about that kind of stuff.

“Please don’t leave me,” You cry out, desperately. “I love you.”

“Too late. I’m going into the wired.” You hear them say, but their voice is garbled, abstracted by noise, compressed into an incoherent soundbyte. “I’m getting lainpilled.”

And in a remarkable flash of blue light, the wires extend themself from the monitor, reaching like tendrils, embracing your child. Digital angels hum 8-bit rhapsodies. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. It was only 14 years ago when you were holding them like that, warm in your arms, a toddler who didn’t know any better. Your sweet child. You wish you would’ve shielded them from all there is in this world.

“No…” You scream. “No!”

It’s over in an instant. What’s left is a sweat-stained gamer chair and a cat ear headset. You reach out, speechless, but they’re gone now. You’re never going to see your child again. They’ve become one with the interwebs. That noise music is still playing through their speakers, the last song you’d ever heard when your child was still here poking at your eardrums like Ear Cleaning ASMR.

And it still sounds like shit.

That being said...

Machine Girl has been my favorite band for a while. Ever since their music first entered my mind palace, I’ve been a changed man. Tried and true MachineGirlCel over here. Real MachineGirlHead.

Much of their music is high-energy, very auditorily crowded with scream vocals and punchy drums. One thing about Machine Girl is that even as their melodies can seem scatterbrained and change quickly, the rhythm thrums through. It’s merciless and you just have to hold onto the side of the car for dear life as your legs get reduced to shit on the asphalt in a bloody trail at 120MPH. It’s neck-breaking, spine-breaking, getting your ass eaten in the fourth dimension-ing, but that’s the beauty of it all!

I'll present to you a few of my favorite albums from their discography.

U-Void Synthesizer

U-Void Synthesizer has to be my favorite album of all time by Machine Girl-- I’d dare to say that it’s basically my favorite album of all time. Something about it is more grimy and gore-splattered than the other albums. If I had to summarize its sound through words, I’d say it sounds a lot like if you took a low-poly FPS game level where you’re in hell and fighting cerberus with a laser gun, put it in a blender, photographed the grody remains, and transposed that photo into sound form.

Here are my favorite songs off of the album...

All of them. Not a single bad song in here. But...
▶ Batsu Forever - My favorite MG song of all time. It’s seriously so good. The first phase of it is more slow and droning. Images of swarms of war robots marching toward their doom come to mind. SILENT FORCES PSYCHIC WARFARE. Shortly after, you think the song has ended, but no… That’s just the beginning. The song picks up and the drums kick faster. Oh, the bloodshed! The pure violence of sound! If a song could kill me, it’s this one. MURDER, TAILSPIN! MY DREAMS ARE FULL OF SHIT!
▶ Scroll Of Sorrow - I like this one a lot because its melody reminds me of old browsers somehow. It’s as if they directly sampled the sounds of a computer dinging and whirring and dying as malware forces a hundred windows of internet explorer to manifest, at this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen. I also like Devil Speak for this same reason. FAKE IT ONLINE! MAKE IT OFFLINE!
▶ Fortress Destroyer - I feel like this one is underrated. It really grew on me. Great to do homework to. In the audio realm, it sounds like the deformed twin that The Fortress (The Blood Inside…) ate in the womb. I actually feel like I’m descending into the 9th circle here. It’s all about destroying regimes and It’s awesome.

…Because I’m Young Arrogant and Hate Everything You Stand For

This used to be my favorite album before U-Void Synthesizer seized first place. Imagine being 15 and listening to this for the first time. This album made me infinitely more annoying. It’s still wormed its way into my cranium though and permanently altered my chemistry by eating a maze in the shape of a kawaii rabid bloodthirsty catgirl into my decision-making lobe, so…

Here are my favorite songs off of the album...

▶ Mchngrl vs Wlfgr - Absolute CRAZY fucking song. I really like the segments of brute-force interspersed by the sections that feel like music from an 8-bit spaceship steering minigame. I CAN FEEL IT IN MY HEAD! I CAN FEEL IT IN MY HEAD!
▶ Because I’m Young Arrogant and Hate Everything You Stand For - I have an outstanding memory of me going “Oh, I love this song!” in the car as it came on during a random shuffle, forcing my friends to sit through the entire thing in all its ear-splitting glory. It doesn’t sound like it’d be that harsh until it is… really creeps up on you. Jesus. I EXIST IN THE SLUDGE BETWEEN FICTION AND FACT!
▶ Fuck Up Your Face - Completely infectious catchy song. This is one of the songs that I remember listening to in the earlier days. In art class, in my mom’s room, dancing to this song. This is kind of like my teen coming-of-age-movie soundtrack except instead of me mustering up the balls to go swap spit with some dude I’m killing neighborhood dogs with my bare teeth instead. Maybe you guys should watch Ginger Snaps.

The Ugly Art

The Ugly Art has some really good loops. When I listen to it, I get the feeling that I’m lying in bed with a mean fever and sweating like hell and basically just fucking rotting away (but in a good way.) Like I’ve got some sort of dog-borne disease. It’s grating in an incredibly infectious way. The tones in this album are dark and punchy, really polarizing, and almost kind of hollow-sounding. As if they were playing all of this shit through a long metal tube and into the microphone.

Here are my favorite songs off of the album...

▶ Congratulations - This song is laced with something. The main loop is some corrupted digital villain shit. It’s like evil character selection screen music. The lyrics always described something achingly familiar in particular: Burnout as a creative person (at least, I interpret it this way.)
▶ This Is Your Face On Dogs - An iconic first song on this album. It seriously sets the tone for the rest of the songs. I always liked how it started off sort of quiet and unassuming and then descended into hell world. The only way I could possibly describe it is similar to what the album cover depicts, a slurry of dog meat synthesized through the power of artificial intelligence to create horrors beyond mans’ imagination. Ruff Ruff!
▶ Full Metal Dipshit - I love this song on its own, but the ending monologue is what makes it stand out to me. It’s sampled from the 1998 anime Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040. It goes like: Why do I exist? It was my purpose to replace humans, whose inability to coexist in peace is their evolutionary flaw? Or was my destiny to serve as the progenitor of a subservient race? I do not know. I did not ask to be born.

Misc.

Other notable favorites of mine include:

Postscript

Well, that just about sums it up. I guess it’s just a beautiful whirlwind of nostalgia, late 90’s influence, and loud noise that make Machine Girl as interesting as it is to me. It's versatile stuff-- I find myself coming back to listen to it all the time. If I were to give you a few suggestions, I’d say it’s music to do linear algebra to (vectors become easier, ) it’s music to crash your car to, it’s music to sexually sacrifice yourself to your cannibalistic lover to, it’s also music to eat a nice treat to. Don’t sleep on the delicious treats, everyone. And don’t sleep on Machine Girl.