Album Review: The Smashing Pumpkins – Aghori Mhori Mei
3 min read
American grunge alt rock legends, The Smashing Pumpkins, have another LP! Their thirteenth studio album, released through Martha’s Music and Thirty Tigers, Aghori Mhori Mei follows triple album Atum after a couple of years – a year of which spent in the studio. Producer (and writer….and lead singer) Billy Corgan promised the album to be back to an old school rock album, of which “old-school fans will be happy, for once.” As an old-school fan, let’s find out….
Starting strong, Edin begins with a guitar riff around forty seconds in which proclaims that the old Pumpkins are back! This is the Pumpkins of the 1990s, Corgan’s vocal tones work magnificently. Pentagrams follows, slow starting, but again the opening riffs are paying the old-school fans for their loyalty… with interest! This track reminds me of Machina or Oceania tracks – a well written, musically balanced alt rock track with great lyrics and guitar solo – how can you follow this track? With first single release Sighommi, that’s how!! Wasting no time, the guitars gallop along to the beat of the pounding drums – my only dampener is that there are too many lyrics (sung brilliantly BTW) crammed in! A small gripe, one that Pentecost is the perfect antidote/response to – Fantastic lyrics, perfect backing vocals and lovely string arrangement (both real and synth) on this lower tempo track.
Kicking off the second half of the album, the intro to War Dreams of Itself slaps HARD! Heavy rock guitar riffs and a drum fill at 2 minutes which gives a raw energy around halfway in. Slowing proceedings down, Who Goes There showcases fantastic lyrical storytelling on this down-tempo classic Smashing Pumpkins anthem of a track, and 999 continues, both tracks sounding like they’re straight from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – the guitar riffs run hard on this slow, heavy tempo track. Goeth the Fall is, for me, the best track on the album – a hybrid of their classic track 1979, and Nirvana’s All Apologies… the only minor complaint is that it should easily run over six minutes!! Penultimate track Sicarus definitely takes a leaf out of the hard rock gods’ handbook – think TOOL meats Iron Maiden!! Finishing strongly, Murnau has an almost mini rock opera quality to it, and is a fine way to round off proceedings – great closeout track!
Track after track of blazing guitars and thumping drums – Aghori Mhori Mei is exactly what any Smashing Pumpkins fan wants from a new album… and they’ve been waiting for an album like this for a very long time!! The whole LP is a return to form, taking us back to the days of Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The heavy tracks are fantastic, however it’s always Billy’s ballads that really steal the show, and thankfully this album has a fantastic mix of both – there are very few slips and quite a few smashes!! Fans of the Pumpkins from the nineties will be thrilled, whilst the general music trend to a return to 1990’s type rock and alt rock will result in the album gaining a new set of listeners from Gen Alpha, and they won’t be disappointed.
