Billy Corgan Brings the Machines of God to Toronto

On May 28th, the early summer sun was still shining as Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan brought his solo project to the stage of History in Toronto. Corgan and his backing band, The Machines of God performed a variety of Smashing Pumpkins songs, taking the infamous grunge band from arenas to the more modest theatres of Toronto.

First to the stage was Return To Dust, a relatively new alternative rock band formed out of Los Angeles in 2022. The lineup of Matty Bielawski (guitar, vocals), Graham Stanush (bass, vocals), Sebastian Gonzalez (guitar) and London Hudson (drums) brought a sound heavily influenced by 90s alt rock stars, Alice In Chains. From the beginning, every member of the band was head banging, flipping the long hair they all spotted. Vocal responsibility switched between Bielawski and Stanush. Gonzalez amazed the crowd with incredible and technically precise riffing, while Hudson gave it his all on the drums. Return To Dust is seriously a band everyone should keep their eye out for. Their performance was a rich, powerful call back to the hard rock of the 90s, and a perfect prelude to the main act of the night, Billy Corgan and the Machines of God.

Finally, at 9:00pm, it was time for the act everyone was waiting for: Billy Corgan and the Machines of God, who consisted of guitarist Kiki Wong, bassist Jenna Fournier and drummer Jake Michael Hayden.

When the show started, the stage was bathed in a deep red light as the band readied themselves to play the first song of the night. A huge blast of grunge tones and riffs kicked off the night and started the intro to Heavy Metal Machine. Their third song, Where Boys Fear To Tread, they experienced buzzing sound issues towards the end of the song, but the seasoned musicians continued to play through the feedback.

While all of the songs they performed were Smashing Pumpkins songs, The Machines of God brought their own energy to the songs, and made them seem so different, yet so similar to the originals. Even during songs such as Bullet With Butterfly Wings, the Machines of God had their own take on the song as Corgan’s vocals reminded everyone that these were still Smashing Pumpkins songs.

Corgan took a second after Bullet With Butterfly Wings to acknowledge the was the 30th anniversary of Mellon Collie and the Infinte Sadness, and then went on to play one of his favourite songs, Muzzle. Following that was one of, if not the most popular song by the Smashing Pumpkins, 1979. Once again, the Machines of God’s performance of 1979 was different than when The Smashing Pumpkins performed it, but it was incredible nonetheless. The signature intro played and the crowd went wild, singing along to every word.

A short while after, the rest of the band left the stage save for Corgan and Fournier. Corgan swapped the electric guitars he had been using all throughout the night for an acoustic guitar before beginning the intro to Tonight, Tonight. Fournier and Corgan shared vocals on this song, Fournier’s breathy and ethereal voice complementing and contrasting Corgan’s distorted and raspy voice. Together, their performance sounded like one from out of this world.

If There Is A God began with Corgan alone onstage, and it looked like it would be only him for the rest of the song… until Wong, Fournier and Hayden joined him onstage and sound burst through the room. The songs were very riff heavy, focusing more on the instrumentals and technical musical performance rather than focusing on the lyrics. The band would go on to perform a 5 song encore, starting with Sicarius and ending with Zero, fitting for the “Return to Zero” tour, and finally, The Everlasting Gaze. From there, Billy Corgan and The Machines of God bid the crowd goodbye with bows and guitars picks tossed into the crowd.