Machina The Machines of God is the fifth studio album by the rock band The Smashing Pumpkins, released on February 29, 2000, by Virgin Records. The band released 3 singles in support of their album: The Everlasting Gaze, released on December 9, 1999, Stand Inside Your Love, released on February 21, 2000 and Try, Try, Try, released on September 11, 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 initial break-up in 2000. A sequel album Machina II The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music was later released independently via the Internet, and in highly limited quantities for the physical version. Following the gothic and industrial rock elements established by its predecessor, Adore, Machina again proved controversial to the band’s fan base and failed to reconnect them with chart topping success. However, after the relatively brief Adore tour, the new line up with Chamberlin and the former Hole bass guitarist Melissa Auf der Maur mounted longer international tours that returned the live incarnation of the band to a guitar driven hard rock style.
Much like previous albums, the songs were first tracked acoustically at Corgan’s house in late 1998 before the band set to work on them at their practice space and the Chicago Recording Company. The recording was conducted with the team responsible for finishing Adore co producer Flood and engineers Howard Willing and Bjorn Thorsrud.
The band took a break from recording in April 1999 to embark on the Arising! tour, which took the band to nine small clubs. After the tour’s conclusion, the bass guitarist, D’arcy Wretzky, left the band, leaving the rest of them in a difficult position. Corgan later said: (This put a stress obviously on the full integrity of the project, because it was connected to the band not only bringing the music to fruition fully, but also the public component of being in character. I ended up in a broken band with a half-ass enthusiasm towards finishing a project already started.)
Corgan described the new recording process for Machina, now focused more on the song development than on the concept:
We spent most of the time trying to take the songs as far as they could be taken down a particular avenue. So if it was gonna be proto cyber metal, we tried to make it very proto and very cyber. If it was acoustic, then we tried to not fall into the typical ballad kind of aspects. That’s where we spent most of our time. The songs were probably written in about a day.
After the electronica influenced Adore, Machina was a return to the distorted guitar sound of previous albums, though synthesizers and acoustic guitars were still heavily used.
Tracklist:
- The Everlasting Gaze
- Raindrops + Sunshowers
- Stand Inside Your Love
- I of the Mourning
- The Sacred and Profane
- Try, Try, Try
- Heavy Metal Machine
- This Time
- The Imploding Voice
- Glass and the Ghost Children
- Wound
- The Crying Tree of Mercury
- With Every Light
- Blue Skies Bring Tears
- Age of Innocence
After the Adore tour ended in the second half of 1998, Corgan immediately began to work on new material, playing new songs as early as October of that year. In the same month, the four original band members convened, and decided that Jimmy Chamberlin would rejoin the band, and that a final album and tour would be mounted before the group disbanded permanently. According to an August 19, 2014 interview with Ryan Leas, Corgan explained: (I was thinking like, you know, what the Beatles did with Sgt. Pepper’s. Why can’t we make a really different type of record? So that was my thinking going into it.)
Corgan envisioned a lengthy concept album in conjunction with a musical theater approach to a tour, based around the idea of the band playing exaggerated versions of themselves, as the press and public seemed to view them. He later explained: (the band had become such cartoon characters at that point in the way we were portrayed in the media, the idea was that we would sort of go out and pretend we were the cartoon characters.) From there, a story was conceived revolving around a rock star named Zero (based on the public persona of Corgan) hearing the voice of God, renaming himself Glass, and renaming his band The Machines of God. Fans of the band were referred to as the Ghost Children.
The Smashing Pumpkins
Billy Corgan: vocals, guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, piano, production, art direction, mixing
James Iha: guitar, bass guitar
D’arcy Wretzky: bass guitar
Jimmy Chamberlin: drums
Additional musicians
Mike Garson: piano on With Every Light
Production
Bill Douglass: mixing assistance
Flood: production, mixing
Vasily Kafanov: sleeve paintings and etchings
Tommy Lipnick: technical assistance
Tim “Gooch” Lougee: technical assistance
Jef Moll: mixing assistance
Alan Moulder: mixing
Andrew Nicholls: mixing assistance
Erin Piepergerdes: mixing assistance
Scott Schimpff: technical assistance
Greg Sylvester: art direction
Bjorn Thorsrud: recording, mixing, digital editing, compilation,
additional programming
Howie Weinberg: mastering
Howard C. Willing: recording, mixing
Thomas Wolfe: art direction
Yelena Yemchuk: art direction
Mike Zainer: mixing assistant
