It's about time to start Smashing Pumpkins again!

Just a few months after the release of both his solo album debut and a full page ad in the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times begging his former band mates to reunite, Billy Corgan has announced that he and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain are set to enter the studio to begin work on the first new Pumpkins album in more than five years. Their last official release was Machina:The Machines of God although that was followed up by the vastly superior Machina II: The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music which the band allowed fans to download for free from their website. I'm not sure what kind of musical direction the new Pumpkins will take but my good friend and uber-fan Chris hopes that it is different from Billy's solo album which was "so unbelievably terrible that I would've been surprised if there was no reunion." Billy's post-Pumpkins band Zwan was pretty good so hopefully the new material can at least match that but I think all fans of 90's rock would be in heaven with something more akin to Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.