Machine Girl add new member and hone their searing digital hardcore on PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X.
Release date: October 24, 2025 | Future Classic | Website | Bandcamp | Instagram
Machine Girl has been around for more than a decade. In that time, they’ve gone from one of many electronic acts in the strange soup of 2010s Facebook to stars of the music we love to call terminally online. As their position in the electronic underground has changed over time, so too has their musical style. Their first two albums, WLFGRL (2014) and Gemini (2015) consisted of breakcore and footwork, best suited for basement dance floors. This is the style that many know them for best. At that time, Machine Girl was a solo effort of New York DJ Matt Stephenson. Drummer Sean Kelly joined in 2015, and the resulting duo has leaned further and further into digital hardcore on main album releases. This has meant punky rhythmic grooves, distorted vocal shouts, and amped up aggression: a striking shift from their earlier material. Now, with the intimidatingly-titled PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X, they have added guitarist Lucy Caputi as their third member, creating the opportunity for another genre shift.
As it turns out, Caputi’s arrival has not completely diverted Machine Girl’s style. PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X still sounds much like a modern Machine Girl album. The majority of the songs are punked-up digital hardcore jams, sprinkled with rave-y electronics, with a familiar gritty and irreverent attitude. Where it does differ from previous releases, and where Caputi plays a factor, is that it actually sounds more hardcore, more rock than ever before. Sean Kelly’s drums lean into classic punk grooves more than ever, and Stephenson actually plays live bass on all of these tracks, which is a first. Caputi’s guitars come in hard and heavy as well, but more sparingly, as the band leaves plenty of space for wild electronic rampages. It’s an interesting new songwriting space, which gives the band many ways to reinvent their trademark chaos.
So how does this new formula shake out in the experience of the individual songs? Thankfully, I would say that it has resulted in some of the catchiest, most exciting pieces Machine Girl has released in years. This is clearest in the first half of the album, where the new rocking sound rocks the hardest. “Ignore the Vore”, for example, has the most prevalent guitar of any Machine Girl song I’ve heard. There are parts where the only ‘digital’ thing going on is the pitch-shifter on Stephenson’s voice, and what’s left is streamlined, headbanging hardcore. Then come the breakbeats, chiptune, and other tricks to enhance the hyperstimulation. It makes for a rollicking good time. Songs like these showcase Stephenson’s ability to keep the various moving elements of the new Machine Girl sound in equilibrium and use them to springboard off each other.
Not every song on PsychoWarrior is such a pleasant experience, however. Several others use the new heavy riffs to make songs as abrasive as possible. On “Dread Architect”, cybergrind legend Drumcorps shows up to take over guitar duties, and his buzzsaw powerchords get slammed right up against blaring hardstyle synths. As Stephenson wails about the inherent hostility of city architecture, his effects-laden voice adds even more fuel to the fire. The contrast between the more fun songs on the album and noisy hellscapes like these, and many others which land somewhere in between, makes it a very multi-faceted listen.
Another distinctive strength of PscyhoWarrior is its lyrics. Each song presents a different window into the spiraling madness of the modern online world, whether it’s in those who inhabit it or those who control it. “Rabbit Season” wittingly compares conspiracy theorists diving down rabbit holes to the Looney Tunes laughing stock Elmer Fudd. “Down to the Essence”, meanwhile, points to ‘tyrants’ whose gilded words belie the dire consequences of their actions. Stephenson pulls off some clever cultural criticism indeed, all while preserving the rhythm and energy required for this genre of music. My only gripe is that with all the distorting effects that he puts on his voice, it is hard to grab the meaning of each song while hearing it. This means that on certain songs which have less flashy instrumentals and electronics, the witty lyrics which would elevate them can feel more like another layer of noise instead.
All told, PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X is an interesting development for the Machine Girl sound. The way that it flirts with more traditional, palatable styles of punk rock while still having plenty of their trademark frantic electronics reminds me of the previous MG Ultra, which did the same with pop. This time around it feels even more focused, however, with some of these songs being among the most normal-sounding in Machine Girl’s discography. Even still, their same spirit of insanity and irreverence lives on in all corners of the album. I’m very interested to see how they will incorporate the new rockier elements of their sound differently in future efforts.
