Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

THIS POST IS PART OF OUR DIAMOND JUBILEE FEATURES

So this weekend is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee to celebrate her 60th year in power. Normally one would say congratulations as she has been running the country for that amount of time. But since one doesn’t care about the Royal Family living in Buckingham Palace or whether Prince Charles has managed to woo Camilla even more since the days they first met, it is more appropriate to acknowledge that Rockhaq is available to us all on the internet and it would be better to apply one’s knowledge to music and use it to write a review then babble on about the Queen all day. So here is a review of 30 Seconds To Mars’ epic lead single Kings & Queens, from the album This Is War.

Kings & Queens is based on Jared Leto’s harsh perspective about humanity. Kings & Queens starts with a wild hawk scream which shows the careful and beautiful arrangements of 30 Seconds To Mars. The sample of the wild hawk scream shows that 30 Seconds To Mars take after their heroes Pink Floyd. What makes 30 Seconds To Mars unique is that with every song they have produced, it has the effect of being like a play or a movie. It’s emotional, theatrical and incredibly soulful. The introduction keeps building with single notes being played before Shannon Leto’s pounding drums thunder in which then evolves into fans singing the melody.

The fans’ participation in Kings & Queens shows that 30 Seconds To Mars are being even more creative since the days of A Beautiful Lie. The verse consists of Jared Leto’s gentle but powerful vocals. Shannon Leto provides a tribal like drumming which adds a whole new life to the song. The chorus to Kings & Queens highlights how powerful Leto’s vocals are “We were the kings and queens of promise/We were the victims of ourselves/Maybe the children of a lesser God.” Kings & Queens is about how most people in society have corrupted themselves. But later in the song Leto suggests that even though people have managed to become corrupt, they can still make something of themselves in the world “The age of man is over/These lessons that we learned here/Have only just begun/We are the kings/We are the queens.”

The meaning behind Kings & Queens makes it a powerful song because it has the ability to change the world. One of the best features that Kings & Queens has is when it fades out with the numerous amount of people singing the melody. The combination of voices singing at the same time is so eery but gives a wonderful finish to the song. The fans who sing in Kings & Queens are one of the reasons why This Is War was such an excellent album. It gave fans the chance to be even closer to the music as well as the band. For 30 Seconds Mars to allow fans to be part of the music shows that they will always go that extra mile for them.

Kings & Queens is a fantastic number because it gives you a taster of what the rest of This Is War will entail. 30 Seconds To Mars have definitely stepped it up from their predecessor as they have found new techniques to use in their music, where the results have been hair-raising as well as awe-inspiring. If you listen to Kings & Queens and the rest of This Is War, it highlights why the album is such a fantastic sequel to A Beautiful Lie.