VIERUNDZWANZIG

...thanks Geri for keeping up the work, and especially for the last band!

Before we can get started on quality reviews of the upcoming Haldern artists,there's something I need to do: I used to be the biggest Smashing Pumpkins fan alive, and there was a time I would have torn anyone who didn't like them to pieces - and now I finally have no choice but to do this the other way around:

Billy Corgan (I refuse to call them the 'Smashing Pumpkins' since today they consist of guitarist Jeff Schroeder, drummer Mike Byrne and bassist/vocalist Nicole Fiorentino) sucks.

For those of you who are interested: The soon to be released new album Oceania can be pre-listened to at tape.tv. I've listened to it twice and nothing stuck. I never liked whatever happened after Machina, and that itself was borderline. I mean, I do like artists changing their sound and trying new stuff, but whatever Billy Corgan has been working on sounds like porridgy noise, bad drums, vocals that stick to the same pattern over and over again and guitar overload.

Listening to the opener of Oceania, Quasar, led me to believe for a second that something had changed, but that was a second only. The worst part are probably the lyrics, I haven't double-checked and admittedly, I wasn't too focused istening to catch every word, but it seems to be about love. Using all kinds of clichees. There are two songs that one could listen to, and these are the ballads of the album. The celestials is a beautiful ballad with female backup vocals like a celestial choir (har!), not too overburdened with sound,Violet rays another love song and quite intense, and er...actually a song called Panopticon, which is of course an epic title - at least. ;)