Album Review: 30 Seconds To Mars – This Is War
Making you feel like a God with their energetic music and fast paced guitar riffs is what 30 Seconds To Mars do best and in their third album ‘This Is War, they definitely succeed in making you feel like you’re untouchable. ‘This Is War is such a massive leap for the band from their previous sounds that they had in their first and second album.This is a concept album and has fan participation in songs like ‘Kings & Queens’ and ‘This Is War’ where they have fans of the band wailing in the background which adds to the pure awesomeness of the songs and makes them feel like they are alive and kicking.
30 Seconds to Mars are a band from Los Angeles, USA and consists of Jared Leto who sings lead vocals, plays guitar, piano and many other instruments and is also an actor having starred in many blockbuster films such as ‘Requiem for a Dream’, ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Fight Club’, his brother Shannon Leto who plays the drums in such a mesmerizing and incredible way (Especially on the track ‘Closer to the Edge) and Tomo Miličević who plays guitar, violin, bass and keyboards.
‘This Is War’ begins with the opening track ‘Escape’ that has such a brilliant drum beat and magnificent vocals from Jared Leto. The second track ‘Night of the Hunter’ has such a hefty drum beat from Shannon and brawny vocals and guitar from Jared. After ‘Night of the Hunter’ follow 10 more mighty tracks with even more ingenious lyrics and astonishing instrumentation from Jared, Shannon and Tomo. The last track of ‘This Is War’, ‘L490′, is s an instrumental relaxing awe-inspiringly acoustic filled song that helps end the album leaving the listener wanting more.
This Is War’ is really a mixture of several genres but the main ones are Progressive Rock and Hard Rock. You can tell by listening to it that the band have really taken influence from bands such as ‘Pink Floyd’ and ‘U2’. Most of the tracks on the album have a powerful feel to them, take ‘Kings & Queens for example, when you listen to that song, you can’t help but feel like a god with all the strong chorus’ from the fans shouting and the clever catchy lyrics.
My favourite track from ‘This Is War’ will have to be ‘Closer to the Edge’ with the progressive drum beat from Shannon, the perfect guitar riffs from Tomo and cracking vocals and smart lyrics from Jared, this song to me is the best track on the album.
I’ll give ‘This Is War’ 5 stars out of 5 purely based on the breathtaking vocals from Jared Leto, immense drumming from Shannon Leto and outstanding guitar riffs from Tomo Miličević. Another reason I have given the album such a high rating is because of the dedication the band had with the fans in involving them on the tracks on the album, 30 Seconds to Mars are a band that have so much respect for their fans and I myself being a fan really appreciated that. If you are looking for a new band that will blow you away on the first listen and keep you coming back for more, then I recommend you go out and pick this album up as soon as you can.