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MACHINA/The Machines of God

The Smashing Pumpkins - MACHINA/The Machines of God Audio CD

A fair review of the The Smashing Pumpkins "MACHINA/The Machines of God" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Smashing Pumpkins reviews here, or go back to the The Smashing Pumpkins tabs.

Band: The Smashing Pumpkins
Title: MACHINA/The Machines of God
Rating:

Release Date: 2000-02-29
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Everlasting Gaze 2: Raindrops + Sunshowers 3: Stand Inside Your Love 4: I of the Mourning 5: Sacred and Profane 6: Try, Try, Try 7: Heavy Metal Machine 8: This Time 9: Imploding Voice 10: Glass and the Ghost Children 11: Wound 12: Crying Tree of Mercury 13: With Every Light 14: Blue Skies Bring Tears 15: Age of Innocence

Machina - The album from the gods
Although I was slightly underwhelmed by my first listen, Machina grew on me over the next week or so, and MAN IS IT WONDERFUL!

The album, it seems, has two sides to it, both of which are amazing in their own respects. Before I decided to buy Machina I had already heard a few of its songs, all of which had deeply impressed me, so needless to say I was expecting great things from the rest of the album. One is the dark, mystical side represented in songs such as the morbid "Crying Tree of Mercury" and the truly haunting "Glass and the Ghost Children".

The other, more prominent, side is the euphoric, triumphant side, created throughout most of the album by arena-filling guitars, dreamy synths and soaring vocal melodies. If pure, euphoric experiences are your thing, look no further than Machina because songs like "Raindrops + Sunshowers", "Try, Try, Try" and "This Time" have got you covered. And of course, if you just love hard Pumpkins rocking, there's plenty of that in the mix too.

At 73 minutes, some may call Machina too long, but I love it that way; it becomes more like a blissful and adventurous dream than a CD, with each song leading perfectly into the next like the pages of a story book.

The only thing I have a problem with is the last minute or so of "Blue Skies Bring Tears" (is there even a guitar behind that distortion!?), however this is the tiniest of blemishes on an otherwise BRILLIANT album.

What's your favorite album at the moment? Because it's about to be eclipsed by Machina.

Bloated
But that's not how things worked out when MACHINA was created. This would be a fairly decent album if you knocked about six songs off of it. The heavy rock songs ('The Everlasting Gaze', "Heavy Metal Machine", "The Imploding Voice") are good, but the more melodic bits seem far too overproduced and full of a marshmellow-like substance.

I give the album three stars because, if you just skip some of the less impressive tracks, it's actually not a bad listen.

At their creative peak, arguably their best.
I need to hear these songs live. Beautiful songwriting.

The Everlasting Gaze, Stand Inside Your Love, Heavy Metal Machine, Glass and the ghost Children and Blue Skies Bring Tears are easily better than anything else the Pumpkins have ever written. Every other track on the album is solid as well. Over the years I've mostly left Mellon Collie and earlier albums to collect dust. They're great as well, but this and Adore really are the best. Compositionally and emotionally.

It's also important to consider that the tracks making up Machina are not the entirety of what the Pumpkins created during this period. Machina II: Friends and Enemies of Modern music is a 2 disk collection comprising the rest of the Machina story. This is meant to be enjoyed as a three disk set. Slow down and Vanity are great. My favorites though are Saturnine, If there is a God, Speed Kills, Heavy Metal Machine (Alt Mix), Blue skies bring tears (Alt Mix), Glass' Theme, Cash Car Star, White Spider, Go, Innocence, Soul Power, Dross and In my body. lol, I didn't leave much out there.

The bottom line. Machina owns.

Epic Brilliance!
This album hit me like a ton of bricks and is considered some of the best songwriting I have ever heard. While the album is considered a loose conceptual album, to me it is purely about the triumph of the human spirit. I find it necessary reading the lyrics while absorbed in this album. The lyrics are what heighten the experience just as "Adore". I had been hit hard by the fact that after finding out that this along with "Adore" has neither been as commercially successful as their prior albums, I rationalized it by realizing it was at a point in their career when many people have turned their backs on them. What makes these two albums absolute gems in my opinion is by the fact that especially Corgan wanted to follow his heart without many outside influences. If these albums were to top or equal the sales of "Mellon Collie" then I would not help but feel sick and tired of the massive popularity by the songs possibly being over-exposed but fortunately for me, they are not. The music is utterly brilliant. I could almost see how "The Everlasting Gaze" is often compared to the weaker "Zero" but to me the former is a stand-alone song with not much comparison. It is the intense ethereal beauty throughout the song that makes it dissimilar. This album shows the ethereal side of the Pumpkins more so than on "Adore" while that album presented more of a darker atmosphere. Mostly I find many of these songs completely mesmerizing. "Raindrops + Sunshowers" is also unearthly. "Stand inside Your Love" is an affecting song and lyrically associative. "I of the Mourning" is heavily introspective as well as uplifting. My personal favorite is "Try Try Try" which is the strongest song on the album. It is emotionally upsetting when even thinking about this song. There were unjustly comparisons to "Disarm" and while that is a good song, it does not even remotely come close to the perfection of "Try Try Try". The music elevates along with its assuring and positively uplifting lyrics. It is powerful and easily identifiable. This is a rarity when it comes to many metaphoric lyrics. "This Time" and "The Imploding Voice" are other songs with strong heartfelt lyrics; it is as though he wrote these songs about me. The way he writes about despair, love, inevitability, isolation and loneliness is of the highest caliber and maturity level than most of their early to mid 90's music; it is completely astounding. This is exactly what really makes me deeply appreciate Billy Corgan's songwriting. The high-flying epic, "Glass and the Ghost Children" is also extraordinary. The philosophical "Wound" is also incomparable. The glittery "Blue Skies Bring Tears" and the drizzle of "The Crying Tree of Mercury" are also exceptional. This is another truly personal epic album from Smashing Pumpkins. I prefer their more grandiose works, which outshines here for the most part. The only fault I would state considering this album is that I find it partially asymmetrical. In the midst of some of the strongest songs ever heard there are others that are mainstream such as "The Sacred and Profane". I was almost disappointed in that song expecting something ostentatious and profound appropriate to the mystifying title. The only other ordinary track is the final song, which is "Age of Innocence" and the bonus track, which is featured on the vinyl called "Speed Kills".

"For every chemical, you trade a piece of your soul - with no return."
Even their three outtakes albums, Pisces Iscariot (1994), The Aeroplane Flies High (1996) and MACHINA II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music (2000) stand up favourably against most of their contemporaries' strongest work. Contrary to popular belief, The Smashing Pumpkins have never (as of June 13th 2007 ;P) released a poor album.

MACHINA however, is deemed by many to be their worst. Not so. The album's opening six tracks surpass even Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness' (1995) as both a demonstration of their versatility and a signal of intent.

From the incendiary opener 'The Everlasting Gaze' mad-genius singer/guitarist/songwriter Billy Corgan and incomparable skinsman Jimmy Chamberlin bulldoze their way through eight of MACHINA's fifteen tracks, dissecting affecting ballads ('Raindrops & Sunshowers' and the breathtaking 'Stand Inside Your Love'), existential threnodies ('Glass & the Ghost Children' and 'The Crying Tree of Mercury') and plaintive odes ('Try, Try, Try' and 'With Every Light').

MACHINA is also deeply conceptual, even when compared to previous albums, with the album's extraordinary artwork and prose conjuring a phantasmic, seemingly post-apocalyptic alternate reality that puts Nine Inch Nails' dystopian Year Zero (2007) concept to shame. The cryptic story of 'Glass and the Machines of God' is more difficult to engage with than Mellon Collie. . . 's upon cursory inspection, but further investigation into MACHINA's numerous ancilliary forms is rewarding for those keen to determine a fraction of Corgan's apparent psychosis.

The problem many fans have with MACHINA however, lies in its 'wall of sound' production, as opposed to the Pumpkins' infamous, painstaking multitracking of guitar parts. Nevertheless, as with Mellon Collie. . . , it was proved that the heavier the involvement of second guitarist James Iha in the recording process, the stronger the album sounds. Additionally, Iha also played many of MACHINA's bass parts, following the resignation toward the end of the sessions of original bassist D'arcy Wretzky after a series of confrontations with Corgan.

Whilst considered the Pumpkins' final studio album for close to five years, Corgan and Chamberlin have been hard at work for the past 18 months readying the band's sixth album, Zeitgeist, due for release on July 9th. Neither D'arcy, Iha (who Corgan publicly blamed for the band's original dissolution) nor Melissa auf der Maur (who took over bass duties for MACHINA's subsequent live dates) are involved in the new project, with newcomers Jeff Schroeder and Ginger Reyes taking on guitar and bass respectively for the Pumpkins' new live incarnation.

You can see a complete list of all The Smashing Pumpkins discography, or go back to the The Smashing Pumpkins tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.