From the moment the guitar starts to riff on opening track “Edin,” it becomes clear that The Smashing Pumpkins are so back. After a string of questionable albums and botched promotions, Aghori Mori Mei promised to be a return to ‘90s sound. With the founding trio of Billy Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin going back to their roots, the Pumpkins have produced an LP that, for the first time in a long time, truly sounds like themselves.
Though albums like Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Siamese Dream are iconic, irreplaceable albums of the ‘90s, the band has suffered a bit of an identity crisis since their initial split in 2000. After Iha rejoined the group in 2018, the Pumpkins began releasing albums billed as returns-to-form. It’s been good music, but was often just way too much released at once – 2020’s Cyr clocked in at 20 songs and 2022-23’s ATUM: A Rock Opera in Three Acts, marketed as a sequel to Mellon Collie, hid some real gems in a 33-song, two-hour tale.
But this album is different.
Aghori Mori Mei is a standard 45-minute album that gets right to the point. With a sound mirroring both ATUM and their earlier work, Corgan’s voice is a constant while both rock and orchestral arrangements swell around him. The Pumpkins tap into grunge, prog rock and gothic rock aesthetics on the album. “Sighommi” is an up-tempo track with insane riffs from Iha, while the following “Pentecost” is a cosmic journey with synth pierced by drums while Corgan churns out lyrics like “When the walls were thin and spare / And you’d fix and hold my gaze / That’s when our lies were hard yet clever / And our life was not the same.”
“In the writing of this new album I became intrigued with the well-worn axiom, ‘you can’t go home again,” Corgan said in the album announcement. “Which I have found personally to be true in form but thought well, what if we tried anyway? Not so much in looking backwards with sentimentality but rather as a means to move forward.”
“Murnau,” the final track on the album, is a perfect reflection of that sentiment. The violin and synth combo creates a feeling somewhere between nostalgia and anticipation. It’s a perfect sendoff for Aghori Mori Mei, and essentially what Corgan was going for – a concise return to the gothic alternative rock sound that made them so great in the first place.
The Smashing Pumpkins will be at Citizens Bank Park with Green Day this Friday. Tickets and more information available on XPN’s Concert Calendar.