Despite All My Rage I Am Still Just a Rat in a Cage

During the mid-nineties, I was a latecomer to the Smashing Pumpkin; ironically this was just around the time when their fan base started to dwindle. For me, listening to the instrumental title track that opened up Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness that really keyed me into the musicianship of the band. Then shortly after I started digging the band, their drummer Jimmy Chamberlain got booted from the band after his drug bust leading the into a more electronic sound featuring computerized drum loops as the group soldiered on as a trio. Then after a couple more line up changes, including the return of Chamberlain, the group disbanded back in 2000.

After another band (Zwan) and a solo album failed to make a dent in the music scene, Billy Corgan must have realized that the only way he could get people to listen to his music would be to bring back his biggest brand name, the Smashing Pumpkins. Yeah, only Chamberlain returns to the newest line up for the group, but the Pumpkins have always been primarily Corgan’s music and vision so it is hard to complain that he brought in two new musicians who just fill the role of touring band anyways.

Zeitgeist is Corgan’s attempt to regain his rock and roll God moniker he took on in the mid nineties from all the cheap Pumpkins rip-offs of today that wear way too much eyeliner and have littered the Fuse playlist the last couple. And in his attempt to rock so hard it almost becomes self parody (see the guitar at the end of Tarantula), Billy didn’t have any time to write any of his trademark mellow songs so don’t expect any Mayonnaise, Today, or 1979 on Zeitgeist. Unfortunately despite turning the songs up to almost eleven, he fails to come up with anything as intense as Bullet with Butterfly Wings and also has an adverse effect as the guitars drown out any resemblance to a melody, what made the earlier rockers truly great.

As with the missing mellow songs, Billy’s laments of childhood growing up in the Midwest seem to be missing. So instead of whining how he used to be a little boy, Corgan apparently has been watching a little too much of a twenty-four hour news channel just from looking as some of the song names such as Doomsday Clock, For God and Country, and the near ten minute United States where he goes on and on about some sort of revolution. Even the cover evokes the hot button topic of global warning (the band recently played Live Earth) with Lady Liberty up to her waist in the Atlantic Ocean.

It has been over a decade since Billy Corgan declared that despite all his rage that he still is just a rat in a cage and that sentiment doesn’t ring truer than it does on this album. But he can at least rest in the solace that he can still do it better than all the pretentious bands that tried to fill the void in the Smashing Pumpkins’ absent.

Song to Download - Doomsday Clock

Zeitgeist gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.