The Smashing Pumpkins have christened their reunion album “Zeitgeist” and announced an unusual release date of July 7, a Saturday, for the project, which willl be issued by Reprise. The news was broken this morning to fans that had been added by the band as a “friend” on MySpace.com.
However, a Reprise spokesperson tells Billboard.com the label has yet to settle on a specific release date for the album beyond “summer.”
Frontman Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin are the lone original members in this new incarnation of the group. The pair has been working in the studio with producers Roy Thomas Baker and Terry Date on the first album under the Pumpkins name since 2000’s “MACHINA/The Machines of God.”
After last week announcing its first live appearance of the summer would be at Germany’s Rock am Ring festival in early June, the Pumpkins have also signed on for Austria’s Nova Rock Festival on June 15 and Switzerland’s Greenfield Festival two days later. “For many years there were private laments about opportunities missed and hearts so broken, but no more … we have turned the page and moved on, from places and faces, names and games,” Corgan wrote last month on the band’s MySpace site.