Key

Both.

The Batlord

I got it used so I didn't pay full price, but yeah. I want my money back.

__________________

Blank.

They have Mellon Collie at the used cd store by my job. They want 9 dollars for it!!

The Batlord

Well, if I'm gonna **** on these turds I might as well give them a chance to wow me instead. It's been years since I listened to this and I don't even remember how I felt about it, so aside from a few songs I remember this is basically a blind review...






1. Cherub Rock - 4:58: Ah, one of the songs I remember not sucking. Starting off a rock album with a badass song with a badass riff and a badass guitar tone is always a good idea. And the more melodic, watered-down shoegaze going on underneath actually works.

But I'm still left not as impressed as I remember. All that stuff is cool, but this still feels like a poor man's MBV without the ambition. Pretty much SP's modus operandi in a nutshell, but this is still one of their actual good attempts at least.

And Corgan's singing is just kinda there. I realize he was trying to channel shoegaze but he doesn't capture the way that those bands utilize singing as a way to evoke atmosphere.

2. Quiet - 3:42: More raw shoegaze-lite, with half the effort and half the results. The first song had some actual presence but this just feels like its little brother whose name you can't really remember. Quasi-yawn.

"Cherub Rock" was nearly five-minutes-long, but didn't feel overlong, while this song isn't even four minutes, and already needs to end.

3. Today - 3:20: Oh yeah, this song. I remember this as being one of the singles I actually really liked. Totally overwrought but catchy enough, and with enough actual progression to leave a solid impression.

Unfortunately now that there are more quiet moments I have to listen to the actual lyrics, but luckily they're merely lame instead of vomit-inducing.

But yet again I find this song more relatively dull than when I was younger. Not a true winner, but I am still entertained to a respectable extent.

4. Hummer - 6:57: Oh what the ****! Seven minutes? I think this might be where the album turns. A minute-and-change of dull riffing that wants to be more creative than it is, followed by some dull quiet **** I've already forgotten.

Is it just me, or does this sound like a tepid combination of shoegaze and some sneaky cock rock don't-call-it-a-power-ballad.

BORED! All this silly soloing feels right off a GNR song, and makes little impression since it's drowned out by all the feedback, though that might be a mercy. **** GNR.

Corgan definitely feels like he's trying to write a song with more complexity than usual, but it's just not working. I'm still listening to the song and I don't remember how it goes. There has so far been nothing at all memorable or even particularly catchy.

Little more than a minute to go and I now have to suffer through some fakeass "fragile" singing and limpdicked guitar. Yep, this is about what I expected, and exactly what made me hate Mellon Collie.

5. Rocket - 4:07: Please have some balls, please have some balls, please have some balls...

I guess there's at least one nut on display. Not a bad riff, but I don't trust it.

Damn it, I was waiting for the song to do something, but I think it's just going to keep doing this decent, but monotonous riff with Corgan singing in a who-the-****-cares voice about who the **** cares.

I'll give them this. Smashing Pumpkins were masters of making music you could swear you're supposed to love but can't quite summon the energy to give a **** about.

Is this done yet? No? Still a minute? Damn.

6. Disarm - 3:17: And of course I've heard this. We all have. I know I liked this back in the day, but I have no faith that my current mood will leave me with the same opinion. It's overwrought (natch), and the melody would be kinda nice if the bells and strings weren't so goofy, but it's only three-minutes-long, so I can't imagine it overstaying its welcome by much.

I could swear they were stealing just a bit from "The Unforgiven" but I can't be sure. Wouldn't be surprised though. Okay I've "enjoyed" this enough and would be perfectly happy to "enjoy" the next song.

Come on. Come on. There we go.

7. Soma - 6:40: A song I haven't heard that starts with guitar that could double as lame harp music. Yay. Teenagers are dumb and have too much money. If they didn't this wouldn't have gone... QUADRUPLE PLATINUM?!?!?!

Kill yourself nineties.

Oh no! It's almost seven-minutes-long. I'm confident in saying that this will be the low point of the album thus far. Not even halfway done. Sigh...

Well it's moderately picked up at around the halfway mark. Still don't care. I can count the number of halfway memorable songs on this dropped deuce of an album on literally three fingers.

Just ****ing end already. ****. The last minute could not possibly be more dull.

8. Geek U.S.A. - 5:14: Hell yeah. A badass song that's actually badass. At this point I don't even mind that it's over five-minutes-long.

Alright maybe I mind a little. They insist on inserting those pointless soft rock moments that just kill the momentum of the song, and without those I imagine they could probably have a three-minute-riff fest that would truly knock my head out of the park.

But clearly Corgan is intent on impressing us all with just how diverse a songwriter he is, so **** him. That is a seriously nice sludge section at four-something-minutes.

9. Mayonaise - 5:49: Son of a bitch. More tepid nonsense I guess the *******s can't have any asskicking without making sure to sap it up ten seconds later. Wouldn't want to fool anyone into thinking that they could put together an album with a sensible track order. And why is this almost six-minutes long?!

Mother. ****ing. ****s.

I can just start to feel my boredom becoming a physical force moving through my body, calling me to start skipping tracks, but I have too much integrity for that, believe it or not. I'll just let my boredom transform into blinding rage with which to blast this ****ing album when I finally get to the... nine-minute song... two tracks away...

Excuse me, I just threw up in my mouth a little. It was more enjoyable than this song and considerably less forgettable.

Oh thank god, it's almost done!

10. Spaceboy - 4:29: Come on, **** heap, gimme some rif***e. Damn. Lame strumming. Big ****ing surprise. I hope this album gets raped.

Please ****ing kill this uninterested vagina of a song. There is no possible way that the band was excited about this song. It's just so... so... how many words for dull and unmemorable are there anyway? I can't keep using the same ones, and this album doesn't motivate me to go out of my way and check a Thesaurus. My spite is a listless thing at the moment.

11. Silverfuck - 9:13: Ah ****. This thing. ****.

**** **** **** **** ****. ****!!! I don't wanna listen to a nine-minute Smashing Pumpkins song. I don't even care that it's starting with a halfway decent riff, or that it's not coma-inducing yet. There's no way this will last for that long. There will be incessant sections in desperate need of Viagra, and not a god damn thing to make me care about anything.

The guitar tone is nice and abrasive, but I have now lost my faith in Smashing Pumpkin's ability to write legitimately good riffs except as a fluke. The guitar is just... good, and that's about it.

And there is the come down. No effete noodling, and the minimalistic percussion is actually kinda cool, but now I am allowed the honor of concentrating on Billy Corgan's totally sincere whining. **** you, bitch!

"Bang bang you're dead, holding your hand," is now officially my new lyrical enemy. I hope Billy Corgan gets raped.

Thank you for getting back to the actual riffs? Eh, whatever. Kill yourselves and your children anyway. Oh my god there's not even a minute left. There is a god.

12. Sweet Sweet - 1:39: A sweet sweet mercy at only a minute-thirty-nine seconds long.

Lol. The songs starts with Who-the-****-Cares saying, "Alright, this take? Don't even give a ****." I don't know why they didn't just start every song with that sample.

And this sappy **** turd is still too long.

13. Luna - 3:21: Oh thank ****ing Jesus, only one song left to go and it's not even that long! This album went from kinda good, to kinda decent, and very quickly to an ordeal of indifferent contempt. **** this album, **** the Smashing Pumpkins, and **** you.

Still two minutes to go. Come on. Hurry up. I wanna go watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. The show, not the movie. It's pretty ****ing awesome so far. A much better cartoon than this is an album.

Oh yeah, this song sucked. Doesn't matter why. It just did. Peace out, homies.

__________________

Neapolitan

Yo Battard, get your facts straight!!!

It was a backup musician, Jonathan Melvoin, who died of the heroin overdose. He was only 34 y/o. The Smashing Pumpkins drummer, Jimmy Chamberlin, was arrested on possession charges.

__________________

OccultHawk

lol @ that review

I think the good songs are better than you give them credit for but totally agree with you about the length of the bad songs

It's weird the way so many bands decide to make their most uninteresting songs the longest ones on the album. Books and movies are often like that too. They're not just bad because they're long; there's nothing good about them to begin with. So what? Do they get in a conference and say what should we do with this terribly boring riff? I know let's stretch it out for 9 minutes! WTF???

The Batlord

That's too bad. But at least we got an associate if nothing else.

__________________

JGuy Grungeman

I'll say it again. Mellon Collie was great, Siamese Dream was decent.

__________________
I'm a pretty nice troll if you ask me.

The Batlord

I compared them to Nickelback earlier, but a more accurate comparison would be Oasis. They ripped off bands before them, but whereas Oasis did so to create simple pop songs with an easily definable sound, Smashing Pumpkins only had a definable sound on the surface, but were actually an awkward mishmash of all of their influences that kill the ears.

Siamese Dream was... decent... I guess. But Mellon Collie is a trial.

__________________

Frownland

They're all tepid and bland versions of genres that could potentially be interesting?

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.