Review Summary: Skip this one.
The Ugly Art was an intense drug trip, and U-Void Synthesizer is yet another one. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, yet Machine Girl’s style of digital hardcore is zany enough to be utterly unhinged. There’s tweaks here to make their music more intense, with beats like a wagon falling down a mountain. There’s also the cacophonous synthesizer attack. It’s a loud album, and side note: less fun, and more difficult to listen to this time.
Digital hardcore is in your face again, and the sales pitch is sounding old. It’s the same show repurposed (but not RePorpoised sadly), with previous intensities conjoining into one equation. Basically, Machine Girl are becoming predictable. The equation is: have the main stressful beat, then introduce death growls and vocal samples, but don’t forget “surprising” weird-out sections. Eureka, one completed Machine Girl song.
The everything-at-once approach is a garbled mess. While their youthful energy is a gift from the gods, it could be better used. Any melodic potential is destroyed in the wake of the synthesizer and drum flooding. In The Ugly Art the same tactic was used, but it was so cool and an album to be remembered. There was also breathing room and variety, which is practically absent here.
If you would like to torture yourself today, I would recommend listening to this entire album with no break. The unrelenting pace and noise, noise, noise could deter any grinch, but not in a good way. It’s just not Machine Girl’s best effort, and the clean production only makes the flaws more obnoxious. It seems I’ll be sticking with Wlfgrl for my routine fix of madness.
