Billy Corgan at Paradise Boston, June 10, 2025

Within a smaller club setting, Corgan and the Machines of God delivered a 26-song set to the Pumpkins faithful.

Billy Corgan, here performing in Inglewood, California, last fall, didn’t scale down for the intimate setting at the Paradise Monday night. Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Audacy

By Perry Eaton

June 10, 2025 | 11:49 AM

4 minutes to read

Billy Corgan and the Machines of God, with Return to Dust, at the Paradise, Monday, June 10.

If one were to tell you that they’re a Smashing Pumpkins fan, an appropriate response might be, “In what way do you mean that?”

Amongst enormous popularity and numerous hits throughout the ’90s and beyond, the band’s sound reinvented itself several times, from the space rock psychedelia of 1991’s Gish to 1998’s electronica-infused Adore, making each album feel like its own era with its own identity. To be a holistic Smashing Pumpkins fan is almost like being devoted to several different bands. In many ways, this is a credit to the protean creativity of frontman and songwriter Billy Corgan.

On Monday night, Corgan stopped at the Paradise with his new quartet, the Machines of God, for a rare intimate club show. Coined the “Return to Zero” tour, the band’s trek is meant to honor the 30th anniversary of 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the 25th anniversary of the Machina/The Machines of God and Machina II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music albums, and last year’s Aghori Mhori Mei; each show’s setlist curating exclusively from those releases. If the Boston show was any indication, these songs are given new life and meaning when played to a smaller room, and despite seeming stylistically variable on paper, they felt both prescient in theme and cohesive in context.

Los Angeles quartet Return to Dust kicked off the evening with a grunge revivalist punch, playing cuts from their 2024 self-titled debut. By the time Corgan and his band took the stage, the modest quarters of the Paradise were completely stuffed.

“Glass” presented a rarity right off the bat — the lead track from Machina II hasn’t been in a live rotation since the late 2000s and provided an immediate spark to make way for “Where Boys Fear to Tread,” the rumbling side-two lead from Mellon Collie.

Already it was clear that Corgan wasn’t settling for a greatest hits set, nor was he planning to let the arena-friendly wall of sound distill itself down to the club setting. “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans” proved an early standout, and allowed guitarist Kiki Wong to show her brilliance. A recent addition to the touring Pumpkins lineup, Wong’s chainsaw riffs were an explosive match for the glossier, picked-out melodies of the song, journeying the band through the many tension-and-release movements of the number.

This tune also invited Corgan’s first guitar solo of the night, and while many rightfully associate the Pumpkins’ guitar-hero status to the one-two punch of Corgan and James Iha, when given the opportunity, the frontman shows that he can make the most of the spotlight on his own.

“Sighommi” proved among the best of the Aghori Mhori Mei tracks of the evening, feeling authentically at home among the caffeinated riff-rockers written 25 years back despite its release less than a year ago. Corgan swapped into the role of bassist for the voyage of “Glass and the Ghost Children,” while bassist Kid Tigrrr took the mic on a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s Bond theme “You Only Live Twice,” giving the song a gazier update with the juxtaposition of light falsetto vocals sitting atop a wall of guitars.

The latter half of the set gave way to some crowd favorites, starting with the release of “Bullet with Butterfly Wings,” which felt the presence of the metal-sensibility of Wong and had Corgan encouraging the crowd to join in the catharsis of, “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in the cage.” While it’s easy to miss Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin (in just about any musical context in which he is not present), Machines of God drummer Jake Hayden was a sturdy force throughout the night, and made his brilliance felt on the precise tom-fills of “Muzzle” and the theatrical rarity “Real Love.”

The crowd continued to fuel the choruses of the nostalgic and summery “1979,” a song that effortlessly attaches itself to memories of simpler times, whatever one’s definition of that phrase may be. The harmonized guitar licks of Corgan and Wong tamed the vicious groove of “Edin” before Corgan picked up an acoustic for “Tonight, Tonight.” Among the most iconic anthems of the ’90s, the stripped down rendition lent new perspective and met the sentiment of the song at its core, with Corgan trading vocal duties both with Kid Tigrrr and the crowd. Mellon Collie B-side “The Aeroplane Flies High (Turns Left, Looks Right)” provided an epic and slow-burning closer to a marathon set.

That is, until the five-song encore. A handful of Machina singles kept the fuel burning, as well as crowd favorite “Zero,” which showed that Corgan’s signature vocal growl hasn’t lost much luster over the years. Machina opener “The Everlasting Gaze” left the crowd with as much jet fuel as when the night began, putting a final touch in a massive 26-song evening.

While the set celebrated decades-old songs, it also showed that the smaller setting — and the new perspective from a different cast of characters in his band — kept Corgan committed to giving these tunes their worthy flair. It was also fascinating to see the setlist mesh so naturally. As mentioned before, the Smashing Pumpkins catalog can feel segmented in many ways, and even though they were only five years apart, Mellon Collie and Machina seem like they were cemented into two very different places in time. This assumption was all but debunked on Monday night, as these songs seemed to communicate with each other and with the audience like a singular story.

Corgan once again proved himself as rock royalty, but still willing to lend new imagination, artistry, and soul to a treasured songbook.