Smashing, post invasion

MANILA, Philippines — They came, they played, they conquered, Smashing Pumpkins did, despite absence of billboard advertising or promo giveaways pre-show, preferring instead word of mouth, or the subliminal marites of its own silent armies.

Last year, the Chicago-based band released “Aghori Mhori Mei,” their former bass player D’Arcy nowhere around, but the band still loud and headbanging as ever. A full-fledged reunion wasn’t written in the stars.

This year, of course, marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the band’s groundbreaking double album, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” worthy soundtrack during Agencia Efe days and the graveyard shift on dela Costa Street, Makati. From which a number of tunes were played before local fans at the Araneta Coliseum on the last Monday of September amid intermittent rains: Tonight, Tonight, Jellybelly, Porcelina and the Vast Oceans, and the anthemic 1979, which had the crowd singing along.

But before “Mellon Collie,” a couple years earlier was Smashing’s “Siamese Dream,” heard only much later yet striking an awesome chord all around, not a weak cut on it. The groundbreaking second album was also well-represented that night: Today, Spaceboy, Disarm, Cherub Rock and the redoubtable Mayonaise, whose opening guitar lines were used in the last episode of the Netflix sleeper “Beef.”

Band also played a number of tunes from “Aghori Mhori Mei,” still with the crunching tri-guitar lines and rhythmic assault, the drums rolling with Dionysian abandon: 999, Edin, Pentagrams, how love never dies and some more straddling the fine line between metal and shoegaze.

Billy Corgan and James Iha both looked older and maybe a bit dreary, but never lacking in spirit courtesy of their younger pair of band members.

On YouTube, you can catch footage where band leader Corgan had hair, who despite all his rage still felt like a rat in the cage. Foundations of the wall of sound unmistakable, the closest we can get locally is through Urban Dub, the UP College Cebu band also with a woman bass player, Lalay Lim.

Corgan the songwriter may in fact be underrated, his melancholic style abetted by the virtuoso Iha on guitar and driven by the rhythm section of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and one Jack Bates, son of Joy Division, who has since replaced D’Arcy.

Today is the greatest day of them all, as session guitar thrasher Kiki Wong almost made up visually for the former bass player’s absence. Who knows where our bones will rest, to dust I guess. Suffer my desire for you. Where the river runs, you dare not follow a song titled Murnau probably after the director of the original Dracula film “Nosferatu,” even if unplayed that night.

Love is suicide, but is also a vampire. Tonight, tonight please believe in me. Hola amigo, donde es Araneta? Flashback to Agencia Efe three decades ago, having barely progressed in a country where smoking dope is big issue while hundreds dying in floods are washed away until the next monsoon and congressional inquiry.

Smashing Pumpkins came out of the American Midwest almost simultaneously with the grunge scene in Seattle, so understandably their respective sounds have similarities. The bass, guitars, drums building a sonic totem and vocals struggling to rise above the din. You haven’t heard loud until then.

At the Cubao mecca, where previous acts like Crosby (+), Stills& Nash, Robert Palmer (+), Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Santana once played, at a time when the district was still somewhat seedy and corndogs were sold on street corners, now Smashing stake their turf beside the cosmopolitan but still hoi polloi Gateway.

It’s a bit of mystery why there was no Smashing visible on the Rockwell bridge into Mandaluyong, or any related billboards for that matter, no promos for tickets or call in radio to guess some Pumpkin trivia, the DJ with fake American accent, on the lead up to the next featured song, say In the Arms of Sleep or Tales of a Scorched Earth, Pentecost or Pentagrams, where War Dreams of Itself and Spaceboy wouldn’t give a Silverfuck.

An invasion unlike any we’ve ever dreamed of, Corgan, Iha, Chamberlin, Bates and Wong rocking Cubao silly and taking our breath away, no encores by the Chinese, Japanese, Amerikanong kalbo, thank you, and you can still catch the last trip of LRT 2 or MRT 3 homeward bound afterwards, still lusting for D’Arcy.