The Smashing Pumpkins have finished their forthcoming ‘Machina II’ reissue based on its original conception, frontman Billy Corgan has confirmed.

The band released their fifth album ‘Machina/The Machines Of God’ in February 2000 and followed it up that September with ‘Machina II/The Friends & Enemies Of Modern Music’ as a free internet download. The move was a compromise based on Virgin Record’s refusal to allow the band to release the two records together, owing to poor sales of previous album ‘Adore’.

Now, Corgan has revealed that ‘Machina II’ has been reworked to represent the band’s original idea. He told RADIO.COM’s New Arrivals: “[‘Machina II’] was written to be kind of like a musical, but because it was never finished, it was like shooting a movie that wasn’t fully edited.”

Only 25 physical copies were made of ‘Machina II’ at the time of its release in 2000, with owners encouraged to upload the songs onto the internet.

Corgan continued: “‘Machina I’ was like one edit of the footage, and ‘Machina II’ was some of the leftover footage – but there was even more stuff leftover. So, this was my attempt, 20 years later, to kind of finish the movie and in the process of trying to finish the movie, realising the movie can never be finished.”

He added that ‘Machina II’ will be “in the 80 track range”.

Additionally, Corgan said that he’s also busy trying to finish the “rock opera” sequel album to ‘Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’. Last October, Corgan told fans that the new, 33-track album would complete a trilogy.

“It’s kind of a rock opera,” he said in a video clip at the time, adding: “We feel like in many ways this completes the circle on everything we started and weren’t able to finish at that time, so we’re very excited about [it].”

Corgan stressed that, as with the respective 1995 and 2000 albums, the new record would have a “conceptual base involving a single character”, and that fans would find out who the new character is “soon”.

He added to RADIO.COM in this month’s (January) interview: “Mostly I’m focused on finishing this new record that we’re working on.

“It’s a ton of work, so that’s my job right now,” he said.