Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts is the twelfth studio album by American rock band the Smashing Pumpkins. The album was released in three separate installments of 11 songs—Atum: Act One was released on November 15, 2022, Atum: Act Two was released on January 31, 2023, and Atum: Act Three was released on May 5, 2023. Also a physical box set consisting of all 33 songs, along with a group of 10 additional exclusive songs, was released in early May 2023.
No one can accuse William Patrick Corgan of skimping on lore. He’s produced reams of it as a bandmate, interviewee, blogger, Infowars guest, wrestling impresario, and tea-shop proprietor.
But his musical output with the Smashing Pumpkins is also lore-heavy, albeit haphazard and the band’s album discography was a turning point for the Pumpkins, where Corgan began setting formats and concepts loose upon each other.
A singles campaign became an album; an album became “an album within an album”; that outermost album became an abandoned project.
as a result with ATUM: A Rock Opera in Three Acts, Corgan raises the stakes. He’s pitched it as the third in a retconned trilogy of concept albums that began with 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and continued with 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God.