Active Member
It felt like they had to edit that interview hard to make it anything remotely clear or positive and it still made him look like shit.
Also the “even though it’s a reunion lineup with only old songs it’s not all a nostalgia act” passage is probably the funniest thing I’ve read in an article in a while
Throbbing Member
billy needs to shut up and let the music do the talking.
plus these "newspapers" or whatever they are now edit shit to hell, they need to sell some of these $$$$ ads so how much can you really believe from what they "print"?
Active Member
I think it's pretty accurate that this is more of a reformation/reset than a reunion. I'm ok with that. Billy's always been an ass. Doesn't affect my enjoyment of his music one bit.
Listened to TheFutureEmbrace earlier. Very underappreciated imo. He's only done a few things that I think is actually bad. I'll probably never like Zeitgeist.
Active Member
If Zeitgeist were re-released with better production (like Oceania), it would VASTLY improve that album. There are definitely some good songs in there — especially the bonus tracks like "Zeitgeist" (the fucking title track!!), "Ma Belle," "Stellar" (my personal fav), and to a lesser extent, "Death From Above" — that were stupidly cut from the main album and spread across like 5 or 6 different retail exclusive versions (Best Buy, Target, iTunes). I have always thought that Tarantula was a fantastic single that sounded like a blend of the more modern Machina-era SP and the earlier, more dream-pop Siamese Dream-era Pumpkins. It was mixed WAY too loud, though. It used to come on unexpectedly when I had my iPod on shuffle and absolutely scare the shit out me, damn near blow the speakers in my car, and nearly rupture my ear drums while I struggled to find the volume knob in my panic-induced flailing. I have since found a version online that has the volume brought back to a sane level.Originally Posted by Piko
Last edited by sonic_discord; 03-24-2018 at 11:43 AM.
Active Member
The cut songs are definitely better and should never have been cut out. That stupid promotional stuff never works. You're just encouraging piracy by doing that. The mixing is horrendous. I think the first half of the album up to United States is alright. Just plagued by the mixing and the million Billy choir doing background vocals. They're a lot better live. I find the second half of the album to be boring and completely forgettable (not counting cut/bonus tracks). You can fix the mixing, sure. But you can't fix lazy/bad songwriting. I see a lot of you think Monuments is worse. I don't get that at all. Monuments is so much better. That's a matter of opinion though. But Zeitgeist is that one album I can live with never hearing again if it came down to it. It's that bad.
Active Member
Also add "Superchrist," honestly my favorite post-original line up tracks. The production on Oceania was better, except for the drums. I think with JC, the drums would have had a much more varied, livelier, sound. The overall drum tone is bland on Oceania.
The only thing good on Monuments is "Tiberius." But the lyrics on Monuments are so uninspired and repeated to annoying levels. The rest of the songs are quite boring.
Active Member
Who really listens to pumpkins for the lyrics? When I think pumpkins, i think of a wall of guitars. The music. Billy's not known for his lyrics nor should be. He's one hell of a guitarist though and at one time made some incredibly catchy songs. Its the riffs, effects and the direction.
Active Member
Really? MCIS and Siamese had incredible lyrics.
Active Member
Guess what I probably meant to say is that I focus more on the music than I do the lyrics.
Active Member
I agree that Tiberius is the best song on Monuments. I LOVED Oceania (best SP album since Adore in my book), but felt that overall, Monuments was a step backwards from Oceania.
Active Member
100% Yes. Especially MSIC
Active Member
So this was posted in the A Perfect Circle thread. Thought I’d bring it here since I feel like discussing this album.
This statement threw me for a loop. I didn’t get into SP till I was in high school, around 2005 so I didn’t experience this album when it hit. Was it, for the most part, generally disliked at first? I find that hard to believe.
Active Member
Like I said in the apc thread, I was late to the party. I had seen the videos and heard the singles. Bought all the albums the second I got a job pretty much. Adore was one of my first albums of theirs, I think. Mellon Collie was first (obviously).
I missed the backlash. Didn't know it was panned until much, much later. Being an NIN fan probably helped accept it.
FATUM NOS IUNGET
From what I can recall when it came out, it was overall welcomed by critics...but yeah, the public opinion was anything but. The Ava Adore video was played here in Canada every 12 minutes it seemed, but after that...nothing. I just always related to it, and loved it from the first playthrough. Could've been any of a number of factors, but it's one of the handful of albums I truly cannot tire of listening to over and over.
Unintelligible Whispering
Yeah, this was after a half-decade or so of buzzsaw guitar rock. The last thing anyone had heard prior to it dropping was Eye and TEITBITE/TBITEITB, and Billy was saying it was going to be a 'techno album', which he admits in retrospect dampened the enthusiasm. And of course, Jimmy was gone. So this comes out and it's all dark and moody and the rock and anger was absent. Meanwhile Marilyn Manson was off glam-rocking, wearing an alien bodysuit with breasts, Foo Fighters are starting to take people by storm, Korn and Limp Bizkit were on the airwaves...the general impression was SP had lost their edge, were treading water, and were being supplanted by more interesting acts. This is why Machina was earmarked as ' a return to rock'.
I remember appreciating aspects of it, but finding it too miserable to play very often and quickly shelved it. It wasn't until they broke up that I revisited it and it clicked.
Active Member
As I posted in the APC thread, most of my friends thought it sucked and dismissed it immediately. Ava Adore was a great single, but likely misled many unsuspecting fans who expected the rest of the album to share a similar vibe. That image from Cracked comes to mind:
Anyway, I got into SP in the summer of 1996 and they instantly became my favorite band of all time (until NIN came along). By the time Adore came out, I was pretty obsessed. While I admit that it took me for a loop and I was briefly disappointed that it wasn't Mellon Collie part 2, I spent the summer of 1998 falling in love with that album. I felt like no one else I knew gave it a chance once they found out it was so mellow.
Last edited by sonic_discord; 04-24-2018 at 12:10 AM.
Active Member
First time I heard of them was the Tonight, Tonight video during a summer break. It was amazing. I would keep MTV (they showed music then) so I could see it again. Took years for me to finally buy an album (Mellon Collie). By the time I did, I was hooked. Bought them all when I had the chance.
Throbbing Member
I remember not even being aware Adore had come out despite being a big fan of the band. I didn't see any videos and didn't hear anything on the radio; suddenly it was just in stores. I didn't buy it for awhile because I had heard it was "disappointing."
I got it sometime before 1999, no more than half a year after it showed up. Shortly after I got it, I had my first depressive episode and, well - Adore is mostly a really melancholic album, to me. I didn't know what BC was going through when he made it at the time (his mom had just died and the band was beginning to break apart completely) but it sounded incredibly washed out and bleak despite being basically synth rock pop. "Once In A Lifetime" is one of the sadder songs I've heard; there's so much resignation there. (Obviously there are some exceptions like "Perfect," which is still wistful). I really connected with it immediately in the state I was in, even though some tracks aren't to my taste (like "Tear"). I couldn't listen to it for awhile due to it reminding me of my episode, but it remains a favorite. It's a really strange record for me emotionally.
Cubby NIИtastic
Adore was definitely my favorite of their 90s albums but I wasn't really much a fan of the Pumpkins until I heard "Eye" on the Lost Highway soundtrack. I was so instantly blown away that I remember calling my radio station right away asking them to play it only to get blown off. Then they actually did start playing it some weeks later. Naïve 16 year old me had no idea corporate radio stations were pretty much required to play specific songs at most hours of the day.
I don't think Adore is a perfect album, and Ava Adore might not be the most representative song to put out first. But Daphne Descends, Pug, Tear, Crestfallen, For Martha etc are all fucking amazing songs.
Throbbing Member
Eye is one of my favorite songs of theirs. Supposedly "Tear" was originally offered to Lynch for Lost Highway, Lynch didn't like it, and picked Eye. I wonder if Eye would have originally been on the album otherwise.
I made a disc of what would be the Adore B sides and outtakes from the Deluxe edition, Judas 0 and the various promos with outtakes out there, without all the repeating tracks and demos and remixes scattered across the 5 discs. I love listening to it. I wish he had put out something like it at the time, but I guess it was too much of a failure to do the usual post-LP comp.
I don't know if it's my favorite; it could be — that might be SD, but I burned out on playing SD too often a long time ago because I played it way too much, but I love it when I hear it every once in awhile. I also sort of consider Pisces to be an album; it flows so well. MCIS is the only one that I couldn't choose because it's too uneven for me, and I don't like a lot of the heavier, metal-ish songs without the awesome shoegaze-y mixing that's on tracks like "Quiet" on SD, but it has some of my favorite tracks overall. And I love TAFH as well - I like that there's an unofficial Mellon Collie follow up for people that didn't like Adore, even though I love it.
Last edited by Pbgut; 04-23-2018 at 06:44 PM.
Active Member
The Adore box set really is an amazing body-of-work. The mono mix, demos, live tracks, etc. Maybe my favorite era from the band.
Active Member
“Behold! The Night Mare” is still one of my all time favorite tracks. And the video for “Ava Adore” is one of the better ones ever produced in music, IMHO. It’s definitely SP’s best.
Active Member
I love Adore. But I also do think there could have been an even better Adore if you swapped out some of its tracks for b-sides/additional material from that era.
I made my own little 17 track Adore with "17" as the 17th and final track...
01 To Sheila
02 Ava Adore
03 Eye (Lost Highway Soundtrack/Judas O)
04 Perfect
05 Daphne Descends
06 Saturnine (Judas O)
07 Tear
08 Crestfallen
09 Waiting (Judas O)
10 Appels + Oranjes
11 Pug
12 Shame
13 Behold! The Night Mare
14 For Martha
15 Blank Page
16 Blissed And Gone (Judas O)
17 17
Spotify playlist
https://open.spotify.com/user/iamneo...T82BUv_VfQ6RQw
As you can tell, I love the more electronic side of Adore. I use the versions from the listed releases as I prefer them over the Adore reissue remasters. I don’t like the changes made to "Eye" on the Adore reissue and prefer the Judas O versions of "Saturnine" and "Blissed And Gone."
Last edited by neorev; 04-23-2018 at 08:04 PM.
Active Member
I agree that Ava Adore is certainly one of their best, but I think the honor of "best SP video" goes to Tonight, Tonight. That video is an absolute masterpiece. Ava Adore does get extra points for being only one take, though!
Last edited by sonic_discord; 04-23-2018 at 08:42 PM.
Active Member
Looking for a kiss-kiss.
Throbbing Member
Here's my track listing for the b-sides/outtake compilation I made . All versions are the originals taken from Judas 0, the original singles, or the promos except the tracks that were never released until the box set; I didn't like any of the remixes or alternates found on the box more than the originals:
1 Blissed and Gone
2 The End Is The Beginning
3 Eye
4 Waiting
5 Because You Are
6 Let Me Give the World to You
7 Do You Close Your Eyes (final version)
8 Saturnine
9 Czarina
10 Once in a While
11 Soot and Stars
12 Winterlong
13 My Mistake
14 Perfect (Acoustic Demo from box set)
15 The Beginning is the End
16 The Ethers Tragic
17 The Guns of Love Disastrous
18 Cross (edited slightly so this all fits on a CD R for fun)
Active Member
Listening to the album now. I had forgotten this album has one of my favorite misheard lyrics in “Once Upon A Time” with:
I went bowling.
Unintelligible Whispering
I can't go on
Digging roses from your grave
To linger on
Beyond the beyond
Where the willows weep
And the whirlpools sleep
You'll find me
What the fuck happened to the man who was capable of penning beautiful poetry like this
Throbbing Member
I know what you mean about Billy - his descent has been pretty hard to pay attention to, and I've barely followed him since the band broke up. He always had a ton of ego problems and seemed to be unlike in the rock world because of this, which suggests it was pretty problematic if a bunch of other egotists aren't into it. I'm sure the rejection he's experienced since 2000 (before really) has made him bitter and somewhat insane considering his narcissism (clinical or not).
But in general, I think writing and performing music has an athletic quality to it, and plenty of musicians and performers seem to fall off in their 30s. There's definitely survivors, but it seems a lot more rare to not experience a dip in your abilities similar to athletes.
Active Member
Trent hit him in the face with a baseball.
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