You Can’t Go Home Again
Album Review: Aghori Mhori Mei by The Smashing Pumpkins
CONTIBUTING AUTHOR Danielle
“Aghori Mhori Mei” - the long awaited follow-up to The Smashing Pumpkin's “Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts”, is a superb mix of metal and alternative rock. The entire album has an older Smashing Pumpkins feel - and done right. Sometimes, when a band revisits an earlier sound, it doesn't work, but that is not the case with Aghori Mhori Mei. This is a new classic in The Smashing Pumpkins repertoire that puts you into a dream-like state while still exploring multiple rock genres.
Uniquely, instead of delivering singles, The Smashing Pumpkins chose to drop the entire album without a lot of marketing or splendor - giving listeners an entire vision instead of puzzle pieces to fit together. Without a doubt a very different creative choice, but with the feel of the songs and themes, it was the right choice.
When asked about the album, vocalist Billy Corgan commented: “In the writing of this new album I became intrigued with the well-worn axiom, ‘You can’t go home again.’ 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; to see if in the balance of success and failure that our ways of making music circa 1990-1996 would still inspire something revelatory.”
Aghori Mhori Mei is the first album released by The Smashing Pumpkins following the departure of guitarist Jeff Schroeder - who, after being with the band for 15 years, left in the fall of 2023. Schroeder was replaced by guitarist Kiki Wong, leaving the remainder of the lineup unchanged. This new line- up takes The Smashing Pumpkins back to a place where they are masterful, yet also brings them forward into the future to explore new creative.
The first track, Edin, has been described by fan @Walddo on X as “what happens when Smashing Pumpkins writes a Tool riff”. The opener is reminiscent of the beginning of a horror movie due to it’s trippy melody combined with Corgan's vocals, that gives an almost weightless quality while listening.
Other honorable mentions that have that early Smashing Pumpkins feel are “Pentagrams”, “Who Goes There”, and “Sighommi”- the latter being a standout track with the addition of chugs and nostalgic guitar rock sound.
On the melodic side, “999”, “Geoth the Fall”, and “Murnau” will take you back to rooms swathed in velvet and smelling of Nagchampa incense. “Murnau”, specifically, is a beautiful track that was named after the famed German film director, F.W. Murnau, which lends a very cinematic quality to this track.
The album in its entirety has songs that could easily have been featured on “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.”, which is something that Smashing Pumpkins fans have asked for in recent years. Corgan and his crew took that request to heart and gave fans exactly what they asked for with “Aghori Mhori Mei.”
5/5
