Three Days Grace released “I Am Machine” on September 30, 2014. Produced by Gavin Brown and mixed by Chris Lord-Alge, the single gave listeners another recording with Matt Walst on vocals after “Painkiller.” Its mechanical character had a specific visual reference: the opening imagery of Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands.
Drummer Neil Sanderson explained in a 2015 statement that the band wanted portions of the arrangement to suggest machinery that kept operating without relief. He described the film’s inspiration as “relentless machines turning and churning, never ceasing to operate.” That repetition also shaped the song’s subject. Sanderson said its lyrics concerned the loss of feeling that can follow an inescapable daily routine, when everything begins to repeat and a person wants to experience any emotion at all.
Brown had produced Three Days Grace’s self-titled debut in 2003, and working with him again meant returning to a familiar way of developing songs. In an interview with Front Row Report published in April 2015, Sanderson described a producer who pushed them to express difficult feelings as directly as they would in conversation. The question was what someone would actually say to another person, rather than how neatly an idea could be dressed up as a lyric.
That approach extended to the instruments they used while writing Human. Bassist Brad Walst told New England Music Blog that the band put aside the computer-based demoing process they had used on Transit of Venus and returned to working with acoustic guitars. Meeting in a room and playing through ideas left the songs dependent on voices and guitars before they entered the studio. Arrangements and different sounds could be explored afterward. Brad also singled out “I Am Machine” as his favorite song on the album, connecting it to times when he would “go through the motions in life.”
Matt’s voice was new to the band’s albums, but his involvement in their writing was not. Brad’s younger brother had contributed to the debut and Transit of Venus before recording Human. Sanderson described the group’s writing as a shared process involving lyrics, melodies and music, with Matt already familiar with the experiences that informed their songs. The work continued around touring, with the band recording in stages instead of completing the entire album in one uninterrupted stretch.
Listeners could see part of that process in the “I Am Machine” lyric video. The band filmed themselves recording the track and used the footage for the clip. Writing in his September 2014 Loudwire column, Sanderson said they had been finishing songs before leaving for Europe and described the developing album as musically heavy in a way that recalled their early releases. The video placed the recording sessions alongside the words, showing the musicians at work on the song they were introducing.
The album was still being finished after the single appeared. In a November 2014 Loudwire column, Sanderson described songs that came together quickly alongside others that required repeated writing and recording. At that point, the band had not yet performed “I Am Machine” live, but rehearsing it had convinced him it was among the heaviest material they had played in some time.
“I Am Machine” reached the top of U.S. active rock radio in January 2015, joining “Painkiller” as a No. 1 single from the project before the album’s release. Human arrived on March 31, 2015, as Three Days Grace’s fifth studio album and their first with Matt as lead vocalist.
