Machina/The Machines Of God
| The Smashing Pumpkins
Machina/The Machines Of God
Machina/The Machines of God is the fifth studio album by the American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on February 29, 2000, by Virgin Records. A concept album, it marked the return of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and was intended to be the band's final official LP release prior to their first break up in 2000. A sequel album—Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music—was later released independently via the Internet, and limited quantities for the physical version.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
MACHINA just sounds like a continuation of Adore. It's the infinite sadness to Adore's Mellon Collie. In fact, Adore showcased greater variation, better production, and about as much "rocking." Writers keep focusing on Jimmy Chamberlin's return, but the venerable Joey Waronker, who played all over Adore, was similarly talented. Besides, Chamberlin's overproduced, steady clicking on MACHINA sounds exactly like-- and might as well be-- a drum machine.
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All Music
Any record called MACHINA/The Machines of God couldn't be a pure rock album. The title suggests this is a concept album, which are at least a little progressive. As it happens, MACHINA is a lot progressive. Though it's damn near impossible to figure out the story line, the album plays like a concept album, with each track floating into the next, winding up with an album artier than Adore. That's not a liability, since the Smashing Pumpkins were always arty, yet Billy Corgan was very clever in camouflaging his artiness.
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Rolling Stone
The songs go back to the basics of would-be hit singles: riffs, hooks, bridges, choruses, often with voice and guitar tossing the same short phrase back and forth. Corgan hasn’t radically changed his songwriting; he still goes for anthems, riff rockers and dirges. But there are no more fantasy epics or muses named Daphne, and there’s hardly a keyboard to be heard. Guitars rule: distorted electrics and hard-strummed acoustics, sitarlike drones and orchestral reverberations, tolling Pink Floyd tones, and jabbing, wriggling leads, with plenty of echoes of the Cure and U2.
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UDiscover
In contrast to the introspective Adore, Machina… harked back to the attacking, guitar-driven approach of the Pumpkins’ legend-enshrining records, with a fair portion of the tracklist reserved for dense, abrasive rockers such as the album’s lead single, ‘The Everlasting Gaze’, the intense, ten-minute ‘Glass And The Ghost Children’ and the grinding, aptly-titled ‘Heavy Metal Machine’.
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Diffuser
The sound of Machina/The Machines of God, which turns 16 on Feb. 29 (or 4 years old if you're strict about leap days), was, of course, a reaction to the sound of Adore, the band's 1998 foray into electronic conceptualism. Machina was marketed as a return to form, but that's not quite right. The form they would have naturally been returning to would have been their breakthrough, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness; but that record was a grandiose, mid-90s indie-pop record with arrangements and radio-friendliness that aspired to (and achieved) heights attained by R.E.M. and U2. Machina wasn't a throwback to 1995. It was a summation of some of alternative rock's most compelling tendencies at the turn of the millennium.
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Stereogum
With the proper protection (i.e., a suitable emotional and temporal distance), MACHINA is sorta my favorite Smashing Pumpkins album when the security of adult life, with all of its small talk and dutiful bill-paying, starts to feel stifling. With all due respect to Homer Simpson, Smashing Pumpkins’ gloomy music didn’t foreclose on any grandiose adolescent dreams of a future beyond what my parents could provide, it inspired me to get them my damn self. I get a similar charge from the profound pettiness of Michael Jordan’s Basketball Hall Of Fame enshrinement speech, where he diverted from the usual, heartfelt acknowledgments of supportive family and friends and teammates to mouth off at all of the various haters who doubted him throughout his career. Sometimes, the social contract is worth ripping to shreds to take on the world on your own terms.
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COS
It’s been over four years since The Smashing Pumpkins gave 1998’s Adore the deluxe treatment, complete with unheard demos, rare B-sides, and remastered recordings. Since then, Billy Corgan has teased the same kind of release for both 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, promising to reissue them together “as originally conceived.”
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Plugged In
Is this the same Billy Corgan who in 1995 could be heard crooning “Living makes me sick/So sick I wish I’d die”? He’s come a long way. Machina extols love, vilifies drugs and acknowledges God. The band has traded brooding melancholy for optimism and, quite possibly, a spiritual quest. The disc is not without its problems, but it shows Smashing Pumpkins moving in the right direction.
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EW
Equally intent on staving off obsolescence, the Smashing Pumpkins began signing autographs at record stores and playing surprise club dates before MACHINA/the machines of God was even released. This newly aggressive — or desperate — strategy is also evident on the album, which shelves the multi-textured forays into balladry and electronica of 1998’s Adore in favor of a nearly nonstop barrage of buzz-saw guitars.
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The Southern Sound
Musically, this LP ranges from industrial sounds to dream pop to straight heavy metal (check heavy metal machine.) With that being said, the feel of the album remains in the same vein regardless of approach. Corgan might be screaming or pleading or just pouring his heart out as he breaks down over Chamberlain’s massive drumming or the accompanying fills, but the feeling remains. I believe one of the many common factors as this album plays on is that it is very produced, and even though guitar and drums are their main focus, synthesizers are heavily used in many songs.
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AV Club
MACHINA / the machines of God wears its outsized pretensions on its sleeve like no album since, well, Adore's predecessor, the godzillion-selling double album Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness. From its length (like Adore, in the neighborhood of 73 minutes) to its subject matter (fame, drugs, death, God), to the band's new logo (an S and a P on either side of a big cross, suggesting either a religious conversion or Stone Temple Pilots), everything about MACHINA is capital-I Important, with virtually every element delivered in gaudy excess: There's wall-of-sound rock ("The Everlasting Gaze," the appropriately titled "Heavy Metal Machine") and shimmery commercial pop-rock (the ready-made hits "Raindrops + Sunshowers," "Stand Inside Your Love") in equal measure, not to mention a characteristically ambitious, ten-minute, three-part opus ("Glass And The Ghost Children"). MACHINA is kind of oppressive to digest in one sitting, thanks in large part to the cumulative impact of 70+ minutes of Corgan's adenoidal whine—call it Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie Syndrome—but there's enough going for it to make additional exposures worthwhile. And if the album pulls an Adore and tanks, you certainly won't be able to fault The Smashing Pumpkins for not dishing out the guitar-rock goods everyone seems to have been eagerly anticipating.
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Genius
Machina was intended to be much larger in scope. The product we see here is nowhere near Billy Corgan’s vision. Fortunately, Corgan will be releasing what he originally had in mind now that he sued his record label for the rights.
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NME
‘Machina/The Machines Of God’ was released in February 2000 and was followed up in September of that year by ‘Machina II/The Friends & Enemies Of Modern Music’. Corgan had originally wanted to release the two records together but Virgin Records, the band’s label at the time, refused this idea after previous record ‘Adore’ had sold fewer copies than expected. Only 25 copies of ‘Machina II’ were made, with recipients told to share the album online for free.
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Britannica
MACHINA/The Machines of God (2000) sounded as if Corgan were going it alone, which he was by December 2000, when the group broke up.
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Metacritic
The album is not without its flaws (some of the songs are less than memorable, and as always, the proceedings are dampened somewhat by Corgan's nasal drone of a voice), but it's a welcome return to form for one of music's original alt-rock heroes.
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Sputnik
At 73 minutes, Machina: The Machines of God definitely starts to tire out at around half way. A lot of crap could've been cut, to put it simply. Asinine songs like Heavy Metal Machine and the Inploding Voice lack substance and are dragged on for what seems like an eternity. This record sounds twice as long as the double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Fairly good melodies are mainly what drive the songs, nothing really stands out. After the ironic half-optimistic-half-pessimistic melancholic tune Try, Try, Try the album takes a nosedive into complete blandness, the album was actually pretty good before. But like those new Star Wars movies, it's all flashy effects and no real direction or taste. And indeed, the Smashing Pumpkins fell apart after this album, maybe for the best.
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Time
Machina is unreconstructed alternative rock, with screeching guitars and obscure lyrics. The best songs (the incantatory The Everlasting Gaze, the thunderously tuneful Stand Inside Your Love) make the less-compelling numbers worth slogging through.
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Barnes and Noble
MACHINA: THE MACHINES OF GOD is being hailed as a return to the band's ass-kicking, guitar-rockin' roots. In some ways it is, as evidenced by the ripping opener "The Everlasting Gaze" and the tongue-in-cheek "Heavy Metal Machines," which gallops like Roman soldiers storming into battle. But MACHINA also has its softer moments, like the delicate "Try, Try, Try," the sprawling "Raindrops and Sunshowers," and the pop-y "Eye of the Mourning." Even the most elegant and tender passages are graced with urgency, thanks to the drumming of Jimmy Chamberlain, who recently returned to Pumpkin-land after being banished in 1996 for his inability to kick drugs. While Corgan is still the Pumpkins' ringmaster, crafting all the melodies, guitar parts, and bass lines, Chamberlain and guitarist James Iha settle into a groove that supports Corgan's vision in a way that the drum machine and samplers on ADORE never could. As a result, MACHINA is heavy enough to reattract old-school fans without losing the more sonically adventurous crowd that gathered for the last round of Pumpkin pie.
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The Nachtkabarett
The title 'Machina' likely derives from the Latin phrase, "Deus Ex Machina" (God from the machine). This refers to the early Greek tragedies, where seemingly unconquerable obstacles were overcome with cheap plot devices, such as the unexplained interference of the Gods; whom would descend from a makeshift crane upon the stage and resolve a final, highly improbable, solution. Speculating then, the album title could have been chosen for three possible reasons: to demonstrate the symbiotic relationship of man and machine, to illuminate the failing spiritual resolve of humanity, and to serve as a just description for the central character (Glass), who adopts the role of a prophet after hearing what he perceived to be the voice of God through the radio. As such, Glass is quite literally an instrument, or mechanical vessel to channel the spirit of God.
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Apple Music
Machina/The Machines of God was understood to be a concept album, which it was. Except that few people understood the concept. Again, that shouldn’t have been a problem, since the band rocks very hard throughout, thanks to drummer Jimmy Chamberlin rejoining the group. This album and its second volume (released solely on the Internet) were met with commercial disappointment, despite receiving decent (even a few rapturous) reviews.
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Slant
It seems the Pumpkins forced their own demise. Musical trends fluctuate, and rather than stick it out for a few years and continue to create music, they have thrown up their hands. In years to come, the public would have most certainly viewed them as revolutionaries who survived their own revolution. Instead, they’ve placed the final nail in the grunge-alternative coffin, and like Corgan sings on “This Time:” “As the curtain falls/We bid you all goodnight.”
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Last Fm
Machina/The Machines of God is the fifth album by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on February 29, 2000 by Virgin Records. A concept album, it marked the return of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and was intended to be the band's final official LP release prior to their first breakup in 2000. A sequel album—Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music—was later released independently via the Internet. As with its predecessor Adore, Machina represented a drastic image and sound change for the band that failed to reconnect the band with chart-topping success. However, after the relatively brief Adore tour, the new lineup featuring Chamberlin and former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur mounted longer international tours that returned the live incarnation of the band to guitar-driven hard rock territory.
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Enacademic
"Machina" is generally considered to be among The Smashing Pumpkins' least successful releases. Although it entered the U.S. charts at #3, sales declined sixty percent the second week.
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Kerrang
There is not space here to go into great depth about the grandiose thematic vision at the heart of Machina. It would take up a large chunk of the internet to do so. Suffice to say that it was conceived as something of a hyper-self-aware swansong for a band who had long teetered on the brink of implosion. The result was an album that covered a hell of a lot of ground and was, much to its commercial detriment, the absolute antithesis of the nu-metal bands that were dominating at the time. True, Heavy Metal Machine is a bit of a clunker, but elsewhere you have an album that veers from the jagged, overdriven bliss of The Everlasting Gaze to the gorgeous Stand Inside Your Love. But the real standout? That goes to the utterly spectacular Wound.
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City Pages
The flaws are no big surprise: Corgan's voice remains as grating as his lyrics are wussy. "With Every Light" reads (and sounds) like Big Bird's spotlight Ice Capades ballad: "Every light I've found/Is every light that's shining down." And his blurring of "only love" into "all alone" can't hold a candle to sainted Kurt's "enemy/memory" jumble. Then again, conflating the latter can be lethal, and Billy Corgan is here to stay.
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Smells Like Infinite Sadness
The Everlasting Gaze was somewhat of a trojan horse for Machina: The Machines of God. The heavy song suggested the band were re-embracing guitar rock after the electronic textures of Adore. But in truth, Machina is very much cut from the same cloth. Electronica hangs heavy over the loose concept album about the trappings of fame. More often than not it works: take in the glorious shoegzaze quality of This Time, the atmospheric Blue Skies Bring Tears, or the gauzy, industrial Heavy Metal Machine. And Stand Inside Your Love still packs an emotional punch. But it turned off many who didn’t enjoy its alienated quality, and decided not to stick around, knowing the band’s breakup was imminent.
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Forums
Looking forward to the eventual reissue of a restored and recompiled MACHINA, work has begun on transfers from the original 24 track tapes, as well as a host of select live shows. The effort will be unprecedented for Smashing Pumpkins et al, as Billy Corgan has indicated plans to put the album not only in it’s original and intended double/triple album sequence, but has designs on commissioning new remixes of all materials as well. The intention he says is clear: to present MACHINA in the original form in which it was written; or in his words, ‘as a theatrical narrative.’
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RadioX
The fifth album from Billy Corgan was a dense, troubling concept album and included the tracks The Everlasting Gaze and Stand Inside Your Love.
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Trade Me
On Smashing Pumpkins' fifth studio album, prodigal drummer Jimmy Chamberlain was brought back into the fold as bassist D'Arcy left and was replaced by Hole's Melissa Auf der Maur. Just as the band underwent personnel changes, so did its music.Head Pumpkin Billy Corgan retreated from the scaled-down ambiance of ADORE, instead choosing to reunite with MELLON COLLIE co-producer Flood in a move that merged the band's early '90s crunch with the sterile sheen of late-'90s industrial rock.
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Artist Direct
Corgan thrashes it up on the first track from MACHINA/The Machines of God. It's got a primal and haunting heaviness that careens from chaotic to gorgeous and then subsides during a vibrant bridge with just vocals. It's a graceful display of power swinging its own kind of hammer of the gods and drumming up real lightning.
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Noise11
‘Machina/The Machines of God’ was released on February 29, 2000 and ‘Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music’ seven months later on September 5, 2000. Corgan’s plan is to sequence the albums together as one big double album. Flood is remixing the project.
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Hip Online
The Pumpkins contributed multiple songs to various compilations before releasing Adore, Machina/The Machines of God and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music prior to their break-up in 2000. They returned in 2007 with their gold-certified and acclaimed sixth album Zeitgeist, a powerful rebirth and reaffirmation of the Smashing Pumpkins by two of its key members, Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, now joined by Jeff Schroeder (guitar), Ginger Reyes (bass) and Lisa Harriton (keyboards).
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Fandom
Machina/The Machines of God is the fifth studio album from American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins.
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Ilxor
There's only really a couple of songs on this record that I would class as "heavy", though! I still rate 'The Everlasting Gaze', and I think 'The Imploding Voice' is a decent enough song (although I'm not fond of the production treatment on that particular song, hence why I'm looking forward to the remix so much). I'd say 'Heavy Metal Machine' was the worst of all the "heavy" songs, though.
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ES
Machina/The Machines of God is The Smashing Pumpkins‘ fifth studio album, released on February 29, 2000. A concept album, it marked the return of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and was intended to be the band’s final official LP release prior to their first breakup in 2000.
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Hot Press
The Shoulder Of Giants, Pumpkins' mainman Billy Corgan has instead opted for the non-cooperation policy of the pampered superstar, all of which is unlikely to aid the frankly preposterous conceit which is MACHINA/the machines of God.
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Guitar Pro
Particularly in regards to rhythm, the early work of Corgan and fellow guitarist James Iha was incredibly aggressive, engaging and even melodic. Despite being heavily distorted, in many cases, their music didn’t rely on distortion or mere heaviness to generate appeal.
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Sp Freaks
“An original US in-house advance promo featuring the alternate “premaster” mix, which is mostly apparent on “The Sacred And Profane” and “Age Of Innocence”. In the late 90’s I was working at a large record store where many industry people sold their promotional CD’s. I was also obsessively collecting Pumpkins promos and initially just thought this was an interesting variant on the normal promos that were going around. Little did I know that this was in fact an unfinished version of the album! This is a pretty no-frills, industry promo, which means it’s a single panel b&w insert + an “acetate” CD with the band name written in pen. It actually looks a lot like Billy’s handwriting (despite his predilection for all-caps), but I’m going to leave that as pure speculation.”
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Google Play
Machina/The Machines of God is the fifth studio album by the American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on February 29, 2000, by Virgin Records. A concept album, it marked the return of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and was intended to be the band's final official LP release prior to their first break up in 2000. A sequel album—Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music—was later released independently via the Internet, and limited quantities for the physical version.
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Getd
The present study examines MACHINA, a hybrid multimedia narrative composed and performed by Billy Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins. Through a disjunctive use of media to tell the story of a fractured, hybrid hero named GLASS, Corgan reveals himself to be an inheritor of William Blake’s attitudes toward creative media as evidenced in his experiments in illuminated engraving. GLASS, the focus of the chards of narrative and performance, represents one variant of Joseph Campbell’s hero as suited to the needs of Corgan’s disaffected audience. In the act of co-creating the narrative with Corgan, his audience helps to enter themselves into a liminal state and a sense of communitas as developed by anthropologist Victor Turner, again with variations made to suit the fractured, conflicted nature of Billy Corgan’s audience. More than a concept album, MACHINA reworks a number of existing notions about religious responses to narrative and performance.
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Flipboard
Hailed by some as the band’s “masterpiece”, ‘Machina/The Machines Of God’ was a “really dark album about loss”, according to Billy Corgan.
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Music Stack
Falling short of the concept album it was intended to be, Machina... has some truly bad moments. The album also features some excruciatingly beautiful songs. Thanks to these shining elements, you can almost forgive Flood's studio finesse for not creating a spark when the songs short circuit. Certainly, this is their most frustrating album to date.
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Drowned In Sound
Incredible guitar tones. I think overall it's a good album, as in better than a lot of the shit that is released, but just doesn't have the quality of Gish, Siamese Dream, Melon Collie and particularly Adore. It was the beginning of the end really and a little bit sad. Some of the gigs they did at the end were really bad and have sort of tarnished my view of the band at that period.
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Entertainment IE
From a band that perenially promises much and falls frustratingly short, Machina seems to be an album crafted in the image of The Smashing Pumpkins. Shrugging off any suggestion of succumbing to pop, The Pumpkins have once more gone all dark and laborious [see 'Glass and the Ghost Children' as a case in point]. The only problem is that the central tunes don't seem to be there, relegating much of this album to the status of background music for the bedrooms of Generation Y. 'Age of Innocence' is interesting, though, but for the most part this is uninspiring.
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Wrif
Machina/The Machines of God was an uphill battle back when it conceived a few decades ago. The Pumpkins had done a double album, but this was truly Corgan trying his hand at a concept record. With an entire backstory and characters for each member of the band to represent in homage to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars they went about recording 2 records worth of material with Melon Collie Producer Flood. But the record company, having taken a hit from the last SP release, Adore, wasn’t on board and the project was cut into 1 album. In response as the band was falling apart, they released the rest of the tracks, some only half finished, into the emerging internet with the intent to share with fans what could have been.
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Archive
Though not as well known among Pumpkins fans as the band's commercial releases, MACHINA II perhaps enjoys greater popularity among die-hard fans than its sister album, MACHINA. Its underground popularity can most likely be attributed to its hard, raw sound and rough energy. This sound was further defined by the manner of the album's release: the tracks were sourced from hand-cut vinyl records and then uploaded to the internet. The end result was a collection of heavy rock songs with a very raw, "lo-fi" sound intentionally characterized by pops, scratches, and other distortions. For fans left unsatisfied by the muted atmospherics of Adore and the sometimes over-processed and obtuse first MACHINA, MACHINA II was a welcome return to the band's hard rock roots.
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