The Smashing Pumpkins - "Aghori Mhori Mei"
I can’t lie — I almost ignored this album. And, given my time constraints, maybe I should have. Coming into this, I was fairly over Billy Corgan’s voice.
Why?
ATUM. ATUM is why. Sure, the triple-album had some good material, but it was still three albums, each one only kinda mid or slightly above, in a span of six months.1
And they didn’t take a break? How can I expect anything decent from Aghori Mhori Mei?
And then the album opens with this cold guitar intro before exploding into grungy, 90s-era Smashing Pumpkins riffage. A minute-and-a-half into opening track “Edin”, whatever doubts I had following ATUM have largely dissipated.
In interviews and updates discussing the new album over the year before it released, Corgan reiterated, repeatedly, that the goal was the make something more ‘old-school’, a ‘guitar record’.
I’ll be damned if they didn’t come through.
And the album largely focuses on the instrumentation. The guitar is strong throughout, with rare exception. One of those is closing track “Murnau”, which is named after F.W. Murnau, the director of Nosferatu. “Murnau” pulls in a suite of classical instruments — the orchestration is dense enough that you feel, at times, that you’re walking through a jungle of strings. It is a beautiful exception to the guitar-heavy direction of the rest of the album.
Even if Corgan’s two-syllable pronunciation of “rolls” becomes a bit much.
In fact, while there are a couple of ‘just okay’ songs (and I’m just not fond of “Pentecost”, period), the album’s biggest issue is Corgan’s vocals. Opening track “Edin” remains one of the best songs in spite of his phoned-in vocals. Corgan has a great, unique voice. He just doesn’t do anything with it on Aghori Mhori Mei, and it really holds the album back.
It’s greatest strength, though, might be its writing. I haven’t had time to deep-dive the lyrics, but I have read through them. The parts that aren’t repetitive are good. There are deep and subtle meanings laced through them with expert precision. I get the feeling that the album has enough meat to provide material for plenty of debates for fans.
The album’s title, alone, has already created a bit of a buzz as various fans and outlets try to decipher its meaning. In brief:
“Aghori” is recognized as “a sect of Hindu ascetics known for their unconventional practices”, as Classic Rock was informed by ChatGPT. Wikipedia (see the first link on this bullet) has more information with sources linked, but suffice it to say that they are a rather macabre, death-obsessed group.
Beats Per Minute has proposed that “Mhori” could be an “alteration” of “Mahori”, a Thai word which was likely derived from the Sanskrit “Manohara”. “Manohara” means “beautiful”, and its Thai derivative is a traditional folk music ensemble style.
“Mei” is a Hindi possessive term.
All together, we get something like “My Beautiful Death Worshippers” or “My Hymns of Death”. The latter works in the music aspect, but admittedly sounds too M E T A L for a Smashing Pumpkins album. These are largely shots in the dark, though, as Corgan has been rather mum on the matter. Feel free to toss out your own thoughts in the comments.
While the title is not perfectly clear, we can decipher enough to confirm that it reinforces the album’s macabre tone; Death is a consistent motif in the lyrics and subject matter.
I do believe that Aghori Mhori Mei could have used a little more time in the oven. It is conceptually solid, but there are some execution elements which are lacking. Still, it’s better than I expected at this point. I’m not unhappy with it.
Rating: Green
The three acts were released between November 15, 2022 and May 5, 2023. While I did not transfer any album reviews from 2022 when moving onto this platform, I can tell you that the first album was the only one of the three to score at least a Green — and I’ll remind you that the minumum score to make Green is a 6.5/10. I’ll link the reviews for the other two: