Smashing Pumpkins are in 'Zeigeist' stage on CD

Thank you God! The Smashing Pumpkins are back together and with its first album Zeitgeist (Martha's Music/Reprise Records) the buzzing hive of Pumpkins' guitars is clearly where bandleader Billy Corgan feels most comfortable.

So, after a seven-year hiatus for the short-lived group Swan and his surprisingly sunny 2005 solo album, Corgan has revived the Pumpkins in all the six-string-spattered shades of emotional gray that made them one of the greatest bands of the alt-rock era.

Longtime drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, along with famed boardsmiths Roy Thomas Baker and Terry Date as well as Corgan himself coproduced. Chamberlin also supports mountainous layers of guitar with his fiercest playing.

California musicians Ginger Reyes (bass) and Jeff Schroeder (guitar) complete a version of the band dedicated to early bare-knuckled form, with a few exceptions: Corgan's grown into a more powerful wordsmith and his lengthy guitar solo explorations of yore are replaced with a trim, barbed textural approach that's ultimately more vicious.

That is, until the centerpiece "United States" stretches into an epic punk-metal-informed sibling of Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun," with Corgan's strings singing like explosions and twisting metal as he warbles about revolution.

Tarantula doesn't disappoint:

I don’t want to fight
Every single night
Everything I want is in your light.

You and me go there
To places I don’t know to care
The spoils of all I got were left to scrounge.

Don’t let me say this,
but you’re no worse than me,
It’s crazy.

We all are real, if real ever was, it’s just because
We all feel, feel we’ve had enough,
I’m real, ‘cause someone gave us sound.

1. Doomsday Clock
2. 7 Shades of Black
3. Bleeding the Orchid
4. That's the Way (My Love is)
5. Tarantula
6. Starz
7. United States
8. Neverlost
9. Bring the Light
10. (Come on) Let's Go!
11. For God and Country
12. Pomp and Circumstances

Much of this album conjures literal and sonic visions of apocalypse, but there's grace, too, in the blithe grind of the hopeful "That's the Way (My Love Is)" and the melodic "Neverlost." Overall, Corgan's captivating effort to mine both the spirit of these turbulent times and the soul of his defining band is a smashing success.

Rating: 5 out of 5