LIVE REVIEW: Machine Girl @ The Majestic Theatre

WORDS by Oliver Gerharz and photos by Elijah Pines and Lucy Rosenthal

If there was one thing on everyone’s mind walking into The Majestic Theatre that night, it was the single-digits weather. It’s a good thing the music was fire enough to warm everyone up.

Kill Alters, who has been touring with Machine Girl for the entirety of the US leg of their current tour, opened the night. Lead vocalist Bonnie Baxter kicked things off with an energetic performance, even entering the pit towards the end of the set.

After the performance by Kill Alters, Femtanyl took the stage. Immediately, she set the tone for the performance by crawling off stage and into the pit screaming. The awesome and erratic performance alternated between Femtanyl hunched over like a Fentanyl user and turbulent movements as the vocals for each song picked up.

As a fan of Femtanyl, the vibrating energy of the performances of “P3T,” “GIRL HELL 1999” and “KATAMARI” were all incredible, with the sudden appearance of a shirtless goon on stage bringing the energy (and temperature) in the Majestic to a boil.

Before starting their performance, Machine Girl’s vocalist Matt Stephenson quipped to the crowd that Madison is way cooler than Chicago or Milwaukee – which both suck. Stephenson would crack a joke or two between each song, shouting out the furry in the crowd and using a comparison between the fridge outside and the oven inside to launch into “Dance in the Fire.”

In the heat of the Majestic you could really see how well Machine Girl appealed to “every type of freak.” Anyone who was a little weird pulled through that night, with a massive pile of coats on the seats upstairs that proved the sold out status of the show.

P.S.
Shoutout again to whoever was wearing that fursuit. It was an oven in there already and you’re basically nesting an oven in another oven with all that on.