Whatever one’s take on the Smashing Pumpkins’ critically mixed and commercially ignored 1998 album, Adore, it signaled a stylistic fugue for Billy Corgan. I happen to think in terms of tone and vision, its only rival is Corgan’s true masterpiece, 1993’s Siamese Dream. That’s nothing to say for 1995’s epic Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a double album with an album’s worth of B-sides that was as ambitious as it was exhausting and overstuffed. Only Corgan’s ego eclipsed the absolute beauty of most of it. So Adore arrived in miniature compared to the preceding monoliths, shrinking the sonics and softening its blow, making something smaller as a kind of ego death. But it backfired. The Smashing Pumpkins’ stock took a loss. The world wanted the Smashing Pumpkins, and especially Corgan, to be mighty and magnanimous, and in true reactionary Corgan fashion, he met the year 2000 and its musical culture of emerging technologies, nü metal, and synthetic pop with another stroke of giant ideas that only overwhelmed the public.

The “band,” as much as it ever was one (Corgan was always running the show and at the controls), was dissolving just as Jimmy Chamberlin, arguably the alternative nation’s greatest drummer, had returned to the fold. Machina/The Machines of God was supposed to be another double album, but this time a bombastic rock opera dealing with a semi-autobiographical tract about a fictional band (Glass and the Ghost Children) that risked flying too close to the sun. With deep concepts and a grand scope, it was supposed to be a return to the Smashing Pumpkins who soundtracked a party at the moon tower half a decade earlier, a last hurrah. However, Virgin balked at Corgan’s vision of a multi-hour endurance test and only released the recordings as a standalone album, albeit still more than 70 minutes of music. Corgan nevertheless instantly released Machina II as a free internet-only download.

Just as Corgan said, Machina/The Machines of God was the final Smashing Pumpkins album with the original line-up; he didn’t use the moniker for another 12 years. Though arguably the last great album released under the name (even Zwan is better than the subsequent Pumpkins records), does the zeitgeist care or even remember Machina/The Machines of God? They should. In a post-Cobain wasteland, it’s a miracle of a record that established the band as timeless and as classic rock of the highest FM playlist. It was both revolutionary and evolutionary, attributes we now give Radiohead or Wilco.

If you haven’t listened in a while, the most resonant memory will be the first single, “The Everlasting Gaze,” a song that is as searing as Melon Collie’s “Zero” and echoes the sound that won the band ubiquitous acclaim and recognition in the first place. But the second single, and perhaps the album’s spiritual guide, is “Stand Inside Your Love.” Here Corgan uses his patented maximalism to fill a widescreen–guitars that shimmer, guitars that blast, guitars that clear arenas–and most importantly, the lilting melodies to counter the sneering. It’s a ballad that has a pinch of nostalgia, a pinch of the future, and arguably, the “this is bigger than me” theme that propelled Corgan. He might look awkward riding Thunder Mountain or interviewing Steve Vai, but damn if “Cherub Rock,” isn’t the most enduring moment created in the ‘90s, and on “Stand Inside Your Love,” arguably one of Corgan’s exquisitely composed pop songs, he builds a new monument to the band—or the concept of the band.

Even if you forgo the recently released eight-album expanded edition, which is inflated with demos and live tracks you don’t need, for the 25th anniversary edition of the double album, you will finally get to hear the full rock opera (though it’s always been readily available should you know how to download ancient MP3s). There are some telling moments in the second batch of songs for the Machina project. Corgan was creating in a field of chaos and extremes. There are power-pop moves that mimic the minimal lo-fi purity of Guided By Voices, Sugar, or even Pavement on “Try, Try, Try,” “This Time,”  “Wound,”  and especially the entirely moving “Age of Innocence,” in the album’s triumphant third act. All could be a part of the aforementioned Zwan era or a beatific swan song for his true baby. Yet, “Heavy Metal Machine” shows a nihilistic amount of disdain for beauty, while “The Crying Tree of Mercury” is a return to the gothic Adore vibes. “Glass and the Ghost Children” (originally meant to be a two-hour centerpiece) is just as effective as a proto-Dungen, Can-esque jam that centers the “lesser” of his “entire” vision.

By all means, explore and find the “intended” mix of Machina I and II, and to that end, find Aeroplane Flies High and marinate in the B-sides of Mellon Collie. The truth is Billy Corgan’s alter ego has been his lodestar: the indifferent guitar hero with an overactive imagination and arena-clearing riffs. His ambition has been his blessing and curse, and the different masks he’s worn when trying to escape the facade of a rock star show up on the last “true” Smashing Pumpkins album. I have no idea what Ketamine feels like, but I can imagine, like Billy did in 2000, that this is a trip that touches all sensors in that kinetic field of rock invention. It’s a forgotten relic of the last time anyone cared about guitars that is worthy of your time and effort.