The Smashing Pumpkins - Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts
On May 5, 2023, the massive work "Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts", the twelfth studio album by "The Smashing Pumpkins", was completed and released in its entirety as a single piece, after being gradually released in three separate sets, the first act on November 15, 2022, the second act on January 31, 2023, and the third act alongside the unified edition on May 5, 2023.
Few bands in the history of alternative rock have dared to chart an artistic vision that spans nearly three decades, but for Billy Corgan and "The Smashing Pumpkins", megalomaniacal ambition has never been a dirty word but an existential fuel. Ever since the heyday of the 1990s, when the Chicago quartet defined the sound of a generation with masterpieces like 1991's "Gish," 1993's "Siamese Dream," and 1995's double masterpiece "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," Corgan has seen the band's albums as chapters in a larger mythology in which the figure behind the songs changes face, form, and identity. After the exciting reunion in 2018 that brought back founding guitarist James Iha and virtuoso drummer Jimmy Chamberlin alongside veteran guitarist Jeff Schroeder, and after the electronic experiments of the 2020 double album "Cyr", Corgan decided that the time had come to close a historical circle and complete the great conceptual trilogy of his life.
The seeds for "Atum," pronounced the way we pronounce the word "autumn" in English and named after the god of creation and the setting sun in ancient Egyptian mythology, were sown during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. With tours canceled and the world on hold, Corgan locked himself in the studio and began constructing a sprawling thirty-three-song rock opera divided into three eleven-song acts, lasting two hours and eighteen minutes. Recording took place between March 2021 and January 2022 at Blackbird Studios and Sound Emporium in Nashville and at Corgan's home studio in Chicago, with Corgan producing alongside veteran sound engineer Howard Willing. The four-piece are joined by regular backing vocalists Katie Cole and Sierra Swan, a rich gospel choir, and a string and brass orchestra conducted by Tim Lauer and Kristin Wilkinson, creating a cinematic soundscape that ranges from progressive rock and dark synth-pop to the blades of heavy metal. This is also the band's final studio album with guitarist Schroeder, who left the band in October 2023 after sixteen years together.
The project's release strategy was also an unusual media move in the modern streaming era. Rather than showering listeners with thirty-three tracks at once, Corgan chose to unveil the work as a serialized drama series. In September 2022, Corgan launched a successful weekly podcast called "Thirty-Three with William Patrick Corgan," in which he revealed one song from the album each week in chronological order, breaking down its production layers, and detailing the rock opera's plot alongside celebrity guests. In parallel with the podcast, the project was released in three separate digital parts under Corgan's independent label Martha's Music in collaboration with Thirty Tigers, with the first act released on November 15, 2022, the second act released on January 31, 2023, and the third act concluding the journey on May 5, 2023, the date on which the combined and complete edition was also released on three CDs, four vinyl records and a luxurious collector's box that included five seven-inch vinyl singles with ten additional songs under the name "Zodeon at Crystal Hall."
The album's plot takes place in a dystopian future and directly connects the character of Zero from the "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" era and the character of Glass from the "Machina/The Machines of God" era, who have now become Shiny's adult self. In the story, Shiny is a legendary rock star in his seventies who was exiled twenty years ago to the depths of space in a floating prison cell by a cruel totalitarian regime called The X+I, because his art was considered a danger to social stability. In space, he is followed from a distance by a young and loyal fan named June, who bribed her way into space to be near him without his knowing about her existence. Meanwhile, on Earth, a rebellious young woman named Osirah is a member of an underground hacker group called Hopus Dei, along with her friend Nighthawk, the veteran hacker Dr. Aesh and the dancing robot Ruby attempt to decipher a mysterious message sent by June in order to save Shiny and ignite a new cultural revolution. Beneath the science fiction veil lies a sharp autobiographical allegory in which Corgan grapples with cancel culture, fan expectations that demand artists recycle their past, and the struggle to maintain creative freedom in an alienated world.
The first act opens with the dramatic instrumental theme song "Atum", which relies on a heavy, menacing synthesizer riff in the spirit of 1970s sci-fi soundtracks and Chamberlin's thunderous drums, and immediately immerses the listener in the cosmic cold of space. From it grows "Butterfly Suite", June's opening song that accompanies her every morning in space, which opens with a dreamy synth atmosphere and develops into a rich guitar outburst with moving vocal harmonies. When Shiny decides to end his life and launch his spaceship into the sun, the cosmic choir of angels appears in the melodic and sweeping song "The Good in Goodbye", which features one of the catchiest and most brilliant choruses in the first act alongside a melodic and piercing guitar solo.
The rest of the first act showcases the project's rich palette, from the rhythmic, lush synth-pop of "Embracer" and the bouncy retro-pop section "With Ado I Do" to the energetic turning point in the track "Steps in Time", where Corgan, Iha, and Schroeder's electric guitars return to lead powerfully over Chamberlin's racing drum beat. The drama intensifies in the somber "Beyond the Vale", which follows Osirah and Nighthawk's escape from regime forces into an abandoned amusement park, where they meet the robotic Ruby in the surreal, theatrical cabaret section "Hooray!", and concludes with the mesmerizing "The Gold Mask" in which Shiny's consciousness merges with the robotic AI.
The second act opens with one of the peaks of the entire album, the epic and symphonic ballad "Avalanche". Over the course of almost six minutes, the song builds from a gentle guitar strum and Corgan's bare vocals into a moving orchestral storm in which the strings, the background voices of Cole and Swan, and the electric guitars come together for a moment of pure catharsis reminiscent of the band's peak moments from the mid-1990s. Immediately after, the band shifts into heavy and aggressive gear with "Empires", a rough and fiery stadium rock anthem that relies on a sawing guitar riff and a massive drum beat, and is accompanied by an official music video directed by Kevin Kerslake, who previously directed the iconic "Cherub Rock" video.
At the heart of the second act lies a fascinating plot and musical axis in which the heroes find refuge in the desert ranch of veteran hacker Dr. Aesh. After the electronic and contemplative sections "Neophyte" and the song "Space Age", comes the expansive work "Every Morning", a mesmerizing six-minute synth-prog piece built with cinematic patience around a pulsating bass and rich keyboard layers. The climax of the second act explodes with the first and successful single from the album, "Beguiled". The song, which describes the moment of betrayal by Dr. Aesh who turns the young people over to the regime, is built on one of the heaviest, tightest and most addictive guitar riffs that Corgan has written in the twenty-first century, one that combines an almost metallic simplicity with a dramatic melodic brilliance. The second act concludes with the moving song duo "The Culling" followed by "Springtimes", which describe Dr. Aesh's self-sacrifice and Osirah and Ruby's escape to the sky.
The third and final movement takes the album to even more progressive and epic realms. It opens with the monumental "Sojourner", a nearly eight-minute epic that describes Shiny's surprising return to Earth. The song moves through several musical sections, from quiet, melancholic acoustic vocals, through a broad symphonic build-up, to a massive rock finale in which the entire band plays in all its glory. The plot tension continues to climb in the rhythmic "That Which Animates the Spirit" and the fast-paced guitar-driven "In Lieu of Failure", in which it is revealed that the aging Shiny refuses to become the political martyr his young fans expected him to be, leading a disappointed Osirah to turn against him.
The album's heaviest and most extreme climax comes in the track "Armageddon", a display of pure metal power in which Chamberlin beats the drums at breakneck speed over crushing riffs and a virtuoso, lightning-fast guitar solo. From there, the album continues into the longest and most ambitious piece in the trilogy, "Intergalactic", a nine-minute progressive journey in which the final confrontation takes place at the abandoned launch site, as Ruby blocks a laser shot aimed at Shiny by Osirah with her body. From the height of this drama, the sweeping second single "Spellbinding" leaps out, an uplifting alternative pop-rock anthem in which Shiny soars into space again, and the album closes with the symphonic and dreamy section "Of Wings", in which Shiny flies towards the sun following June, who sacrificed herself for him.
Upon its completion in May 2023, "Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts" caused widespread resonance in the music world, giving the band two major radio hits on the rock and alternative charts in the United States with "Beguiled" and the song "Spellbinding", and proving that even in their fourth decade of activity, "The Smashing Pumpkins" refuse to rest on their 1990s laurels. It is a monumental, demanding and uncompromising work, which presents Billy Corgan, James Iha, Jimmy Chamberlin and Jeff Schroeder at the height of their artistic daring, and provides a fitting and glorious conclusion to one of the most ambitious trilogies in the history of modern rock.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
"Face/Off" - Israel's Rock Blog
Comments