As promised, alternative icons Smashing Pumpkins just released their latest album, with their surprise Aghori Mhori Mei officially streaming as of right now.
As previously reported, the Pumpkins formally announced their 13th full-length just a couple of weeks ago, though fans had known some kind of an album had been in the works over the past year. Right around the release of 2023’s Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts, guitarist-vocalist Billy Corgan had told Kerrang! Radio that the group had been working on a “straight up rock and roll guitar record,” said to have been in the model of early classics like Siamese Dream.
Furthermore, when the group officially announced Aghori Mhori Mei, Corgan said in a statement that the record had him reflecting on the old saying that “you can’t go home again,” but, in regards to writing vintage-style Pumpkins, he and the band wondered, “what if we tried anyway?”
Corgan elaborated: “Not so much in looking backwards with sentimentality but rather as a means to move forward; to see if in the balance of success and failure that our ways of making music circa 1990-1996 would still inspire something revelatory.”
Whether that’s how the 10-song sounds to fans has yet to be determined, but you judge for yourself by giving the album a stream up above. The band likewise chose not to release any singles ahead of the album, with Corgan noting in an Instagram post a couple of weeks ago that they “felt the right way to hear this record was an intact body of work.”
Aghori Mhori Mei is also the first album to be released by Smashing Pumpkins since the departure of longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder, who left the band in the fall of 2023 after more than 15 years of musicmaking.
Though the core line-up remains to be Corgan, guitarist James Iha, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, Schroeder has since been replaced in the live lineup by new guitarist Kiki Wong.
Smashing Pumpkins are likewise currently out on Green Day’s “Saviors” tour, which also features Rancid and young punks the Linda-Lindas, but have their own summer headlining dates weaving around the package tour. You’ll find all of the Pumpkins’ upcoming dates over here.