Machine Girl, the newly trio’d New York-based electronic hardcore project helmed by Matt Stephenson, have dropped their new album PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X along with a video for ‘Dread Architect’ [feat. Drumcorps]. LISTEN TO LP HERE + WATCH VIDEO HERE.

Directed by Zev Deans, the video is quintessential in a long history of incredible Machine Girl visuals. Featuring Stephenson, the song marks a pivotal moment on the album. He notes: “To me, ‘Dread Architect’ is almost the antagonist of the whole double-LP,” he states. “It’s the worst of our war-hungry billionaire class leaders who are seething to create a horrible future. We’re witnessing the destruction of the environment worldwide. Mark Zuckerberg and all of these billionaires have already built bunkers for the apocalypse. They’re trying to get out of here and go to Mars. It’s grim and fucked up. Drumcorps is the de facto metalcore breakcore producer extraordinaire. He provided some super gnarly guitar tracks for us to chop up and use too.”

Their second album in two years, PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X is part of the same arc as 2024’s incredibly successful MG Ultra, an album that garnered 15+ million streams and sold 55,000 tickets on the subsequent tour. Whereas MG Ultra explored mind control, PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X delves into the collective unconscious. Stephenson explains, “I’d been reading analytical psychology and the writings of Joseph Campbell and Jung. There’s a concept of the collective unconscious and these archetypes that we innately have. We adopt different personae in order to get through the day. In essence, you complete yourself by facing your shadow self. To do so, you must accept the less savory aspects of who you are. There’s a lot of validity to these theories. Right now, we’re a very psychologically damaged culture and society. We’re being pushed over the edge with social media and technology. Any chance of resistance against these systems starts in the mind, so this was the genesis of PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X.”

Machine Girl carved out an incomparable lane upon arrival in 2012. Stephenson’s 2014 full-length debut LP, Wlfgrl, achieved bona fide cult status, shocked to life by “Out by 16, Dead on the Scene,” “Ghost,” and “Mg1,” which have reeled in north of 43 million Spotify streams and counting. Their sound proceeded to completely reinvent itself across each LP that followed—Gemini (2015), …Because I’m Young Arrogant and Hate Everything You Stand For (2017), The Ugly Art (2018), U-Void Synthesizer (2020), and 2022’s two-part Original Soundtrack for the video game Neon White. Most recently, 2024’s MG Ultra incited the most enthusiastic critical applause of the band’s career so far.

Zev Deans on the video: “This is a video whose production is intrinsically linked to its meaning. All stunts were performed practically, with a treadmill, a trampoline and a crashpad. All objects and set pieces you see on-screen were made by Eris Deo, photographed at multiple angles and then carefully keyed and placed into composites by me. There are full miniature scenes, stop-motion sequences & practical gore. Everything about this video is handmade from scratch, at the cost of hundreds of hours of building, compositing and then Matt and I editing it all to pieces.

The video showcases the vitality of human effort and ingenuity in an era where you can’t even tell whether what you’re looking at is made by a person or not, unless it has a watermark on it. Matt’s sprawling story has been developing as an “ARG” for the last year, quietly released to his most dedicated fans. Dread Architect is the finale, the end of the rabbit hole, where we follow Phae and her shadow-self Reven (both played by Syd Villacourtabuer, director of Rabbit Season and Grindhouse from MG Ultra.

They must learn to stop fighting and work together, so they can finally confront Tech CEO / Final Boss Marc Otherman (played by Matt himself) before he gobbles up every last inch of digital real estate into his AI simulation. Are we trying to say that you must embrace your shadow self, and come to terms with your enemy on the opposite side of the fence so that you can join forces and chop Tech CEOs in half with swords?

I don’t think we’re being subtle anymore about how artists feel about the use of AI in the context of art, and the existential threat AI poses to reality itself.”