When you see the name Machinae Supremacy, what do you think of? Most likely your first thought is, “How the heck do I pronounce this? Machine-ay?” Well, it’s pronounced “machine,” and it’s a band. A band that arguably changed my life and that I deeply and irrevocably fell in love with almost two years ago now. They’ve taught me more about life than any school-lesson or “real-talk,” they’ve guided me through the best and worst times of my life, and they’ve never failed to produce kick-ass music to make me dance and sing like a total idiot.

The only problem is…no one knows about them.

Flashback to two years ago: I was an awkward thirteen year-old kid staying at a summer camp for nerds (we took college classes during the day but at night we had unlimited computer access). So there I was, on the computer, headphones in, listening to some trashy death metal band that I thought was super cool and hip at the time. It wasn’t, and I barely even liked the music. But it was well-known, and all my friends listened to it, so I followed their trail like an obedient dog, not possessing the courage or basic functionality to say “no guys, not this way, this stuff smells foul.” But that night, thirteen-year-old me decided that enough was enough. This dog was free right now, and he was going to romp around in the fields for once. I mean, I loved hard-rock and metal, but this stuff that my friends liked made me want to bash my head in with a rock (I’m pretty sure that was even in the lyrics of one of their songs).

With this decision, my arduous quest to find great metal began. Thankfully, I knew just where to begin my search. I quickly logged on to the magical site known as Youtube and typed in the search bar: “Top ten best metal songs,” hoping to find some treasures. Surely, there was better stuff out there than this overplayed, growling garbage my friends loved. I found a video that fit my expectations, and tapped the play button hesitantly, waiting to be knocked down to the ground with epic sound, probably #2 or #1 on the list, you know, the “best ones.”

I didn’t even make it past the intro. As soon as the title screen for the video came up, the walls of my headphones were filled with an eerie, synthy symphony, which was immediately followed by powerful guitar riffs that literally (literally!) made my eyes bulge. The intro song (which only played for about ten seconds, mind you) was so good that I actually cycled the video’s loading bar back to the start over and over again, like a mean child picking up a snail and putting it down the sidewalk, waiting for it to reach the point it had previously traversed just so that the child can pick up the slow, witless creature and put it farther back. This intro song, which wasn’t even intended to be part of the actual top ten songs, was so good that I listened to those ten seconds more times than I can even count. The synths, the guitars: it almost felt like someone had fused techno and metal, my two favorite genres at the time. I was in heaven. I was in love.

I listened to the actual top ten songs afterward but to be honest, none of them produced the same reaction as that intro did. I actually sat through the entire credit scroll at the end of the video to see who did the intro song (you’d think that a Youtube video wouldn’t have super long credits, but this thing would give a Spielberg film a run for its money). That was the first time I ever saw the name Machinae Supremacy.

Naturally, anyone can predict what happened next. The rest of that night consisted of me hunching over my computer like Igor, hungrily clicking video after video of this band’s songs. With each song, I fell deeper into my trance and the deeper I fell, the louder I cranked the volume. When my escapade was over, I had listened to almost half of their songs, it was 3:00 in the morning, and I felt completely numb in my ears, as if I was being submerged underwater. I could barely even walk out of my chair, which was probably from my exhaustion and the inevitable headache caused by blasting music into your eardrums all night, but at the time I believed it was simply from how overwhelmed and mind-blown I was from this band.

The mere fact that these people could merge edgy, modern sounds such as video game noises and techno melodies with hardcore metal and powerful vocals (they didn’t scream or growl either, another thing I liked) and have it all come out so well made me question why I hadn’t heard of these guys before. Where were they all my life? This band was freaking awesome! I figured they must be super famous and well-known, and I just had somehow been kept in the dark this whole time. But when I eagerly looked them up, it turned out that they were barely known at all. They had a large fan base, sure, but compared to any other band I listened to, their following was miniscule, like comparing a lone cherry to an entire orchard. I was indignant. Why didn’t more people know about them?

I needed to spread the word, enlighten and rescue those poor lost souls who had been living without this band for years! But when I tried to introduce Machinae Supremacy to my friends, they told me my newfound love was “tacky,” “experimental,” and “different.” As if “different” was somehow an insult. Anything was considered lame that deviated from my friends’ taste, which consisted of wild, cacophonous melodies (if you can call them that) of guitarists shredding savagely while drummers throw crazy banging tantrums and vocalists scream scratchy words that don’t even make coherent sense. I was all alone, a sad thirteen year-old kid with no one to share my interest.

So alone I forged on, listening to Machinae Supremacy’s songs until I could sing along to half of them. And that was when I realized what truly makes the band so special to me, even today: the lyrics. My friends’ bands all had fun, happy lyrics like “F--k the system,” “F--k love,” “F--k everything,” and other barbaric “poetry.” But my band? They had lyrics that would make practiced poets bow down and say, “We are not worthy!” Songs about life, death, love, hate, desire, the human condition, destiny: Machinae Supremacy made you think, and most importantly, they made you realize what really mattered in life. One of their songs, I Know the Reaper, actually made me less afraid of death because it completely changed my perspective on it.

Just as this band transformed the metal genre itself, it changed my views on numerous things. They taught me that being different is not only a good thing, it is a necessary thing. They taught me that love is valuable, and that hate is just a pointless way of punishing yourself for other people’s faults.

Over time, I’ve found others who share my passion for this band, and I have managed to introduce a handful of friends to Machinae Supremacy, watching them fall in love just as quickly as I did, smiling to myself. If nothing else, Machinae Supremacy taught me that though we might all be far apart, we’re united by heart. And whether you’re broken, clean, strong, weak, vengeful, or loving: we are all the same species.