How does the world’s fastest shredder compete with a guitarist with 78 fingers? How would drumming gods compete with a stick thumper armed with 21 pairs of sticks?

That’s the kind of scary questions that the latest advances in technology offer up, showing that once the machines really do take over, they’re going to be able to play at some pretty ridiculous speeds with some pretty cutting edge skill.

Meet Z-Machines, the all-robot trio that play “social party music,” the product of engineers and academics at Tokyo University in collaboration with sponsorship from Japanese alcoholic drink makers, as The Daily Mail reports.

The three-strong mechanical maestros consists of guitarist Ashura, who wields 12 guitar picks across the multiple limbs framed beneath his fiber optic dreadlocks, six-armed, 21-stick twirling drummer Ashura, and keyboardist Cosmo, who can shoot (hopefully non-lethal) lasers from its eyes while scaling the ivories electronically, wired directly to the instrument.

The trio make for a pretty terrifying sight when in full flight, putting even their German contemporaries – robotic band Compressorhead, who were part of the Big Day Out 2013 lineup – to shame.

Where Compressorhead – consisting of drummer Stickboy, guitarist Fingers, and bassist Bones –  are touted as “the world’s heaviest metal band”, performing rock and pop classics with mechanical aplomb, the Japanese Z-Machines are designed to interact with a live audience as well as perform ridiculously complicated pre-programmed tunes, as demonstrated in showcases with such artists as Squarepusher, DJ Tasaka, Ono, and DJ Baku.

Z-Machines were on hand at the two-day Maker Faire Tokyo event at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation recently, where the public were able to toy with the robotic trio and their beyond-human instrumental ability.

Ashura can drum four times faster than the average human; Mach’s computer screen showcases his digits operating at a lightning 1,184 bpm, while Cosmo’s laser-projecting eyes give crowds a “transcendental music performance”, according to the machines’ creators.

The technological fair showcase comes four months after the robot band made their live debut in a special showcase for beverage makers Zima (who have brewed their popular, sugary alcoholic concoction since the 90s) back in July, as The Telegraph reports.

Performing at the Liquidroom in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward, performing to an audience of 100 in a rather scary cacophony of light and sound that showed off their interactive actions; for example, the metallic trio playing harder in response to the audience lifting their bottles of Zima to the sky as Z-Machines were joined by J-pop duo Amoyamo in a visual that looks straight out of Japan’s manga and anime.

The proverbial mad geniuses behind the robotic designs are Yoichiro Kawaguchi, IT professor at the University of Tokyo, and designer Naofumi Yonetsuka, a robotics mechanics specialist, who constructed their mechanical, multi-limbed guitarist and drummers before starting on Cosmo, his visual designed based on an evolved fish.

Kawaguchi has even more futuristic plans for Z-Machines than just plugging alcoholic drinks and thrilling technical wizardry: “My goal is to have the Z-Machines play in outer space someday.”  (Though they’re unlikely to beat Lady Gaga’s touted 2015 space gig).

Cower before the mechanical horror majesty that is Z-Machines below… and try not to think about SkyNet.

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