The Smashing Pumpkins are working on a 33-song “rock opera” sequel to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
That’s after, of course, the alt-rockers release forthcoming double album, Cyr
Earlier this year, Smashing Pumpkins electric guitar player Jeff Schroeder revealed that the band was working on a double album, and they’ve since announced that record, Cyr, and a number of new, not especially-guitar-y tracks.
But given that this is Pumpkins, who have made something of a career out of excess, one double album apparently isn’t enough.
In a new announcement commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Pumpkins’ 1995 smash double-CD set Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, singer and guitarist Billy Corgan revealed that the band are working on a 33-song “rock opera,” designed to complete a trilogy of records that began with Mellon Collie and continued with 2000’s Machina/The Machines Of God.
“It’s a sequel to Melon Collie… and Machina,” he says. “It’s kind of a rock opera. We feel like in many ways this completes the circle on everything we started and weren’t able to finish at that time, so we’re very excited.”
What’s more, Corgan also reported that he has plans for a “full-on arena tour” in support of the sequel album – once it’s possible, of course, for bands to fill arenas again.
Until then, the Pumpkins will release Cyr on November 27 via Sumerian Records. You can preorder it here.
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Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.