With the doubters hovering round his band following the rock-is-dead pronouncement that preceded the flawed electronic dabbling of Adore, MACHINA finds Billy Corgan desperate to prove everyone, not least himself, wrong. On the Pumpkins' fifth album, they attempt to reclaim the higher ground they dominated with the peerless Siamese Dream and the sprawling 28-track opus Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness. As a result they hit the ground running on MACHINA, exploding into life with "The Everlasting Gaze" in a firestorm of guitars and heavy metaphysical thunder. There are some quintessential Pumpkins moments here, notably "Stand Inside Your Love", which soars away on a spiralling guitar solo, and "Try, Try, Try" which taps into Corgan's ever present melancholy. At 73-minutes long, MACHINA overstays its welcome, beginning to flag, ironically, at the self-aggrandising "Heavy Metal Machine". No matter, by this point, the Pumpkins have made their point with brutal grace. --Mike Pattenden