AR: MACHINA / The Machines of God

Smashing Pumpkins - MACHINA / The Machines of God (2000)

Death knell number one of Smashing Pumpkins was/is pretty much universally regarded as a failure. It's a heavy, industrial extension of their previous album Adore as well as Corgan's solo work on e.g. the Ransom soundtrack, only this time it's fairly bogged down in a ludicrously self-indulgent prog rock concept, a washed-out production aesthetic that passes the point of interesting to severely blurred, and a severe lack of melody. The entire band contributed to the disc before things fell apart band-breakup-wise, but it comes off as a Billy Corgan solo project anyways. This is all kinds of Not Good - Corgan is a somewhat whiney vocalist obsessed with themes that usually find the emo-barrel anyways, so a tinny vocal over blase computer-modded backdrops ends up sounding like a terrible singer-songwriter album. There's just not enough to enjoy here, and if you're familiar with the surrounding circumstances, the pervasive idea that this is an egoist riding his band into the ground with a final parade-of-excess taints the album.

I am, as referenced before, a former die-hard for this band, so you might suspect that I'd be capable of getting past the flop-consensus and really delving into this work. Your suspicions are, um, unfounded. Like Joss Whedon's best automotons, I try to be my best - try to listen to every album multiple times, let tracks sink in, grab the concept of the concept album - but with this one, I can't do it. The production, professional as it may be, kills the disc for me to the point that I can't discern whether I'd like these tunes even if I could properly hear them. And I inevitably compare this work to the rest of the SP ouevre, and it falls miles short. It's hard to get around - the tracks that are overtly angry/industrial are the best moments of the album, but they reek of posturing, and the epic, proggy, aka more traditional SP songs serve to remind that I'd rather be listening to their other discs.

I suppose it's worth noting that it's not a *bad* album, it's just a boring and therefore disappointing one. There are even some good moments - e.g., I enjoy the opener "The Everlasting Gaze," mainly because it's as close as anything will get to being a Billy Corgan-Axl Rose love child - but they're few and typically marred by vocal tics of a cappella scream-bridges that are fairly tired by this point. In short, unless you really enjoy dissecting nondescript concept albums of the dying breaths of '90s alt-prog rock, skip this one.

Status: Not Recommended

Nyet's Fave: "The Everlasting Gaze"