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| Jared Leto, brother Shannon & co. strip down their sound for brutally honest soph set. Attack, The Kill (Bury Me), From Yesterday, Was It A Dream, etc. |
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| 1 Attack |
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| 2 A Beautiful Lie |
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| 3 The Kill |
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| 4 Was It a Dream? |
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| 5 The Fantasy |
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| 6 Savior |
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| 7 From Yesterday |
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| 8 The Story |
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| 9 R-Evolve |
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| 10 A Modern Myth |
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| 11 [Untitled Hidden Track] |
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| 12 [Untitled Hidden Track] |
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Album Review
30 Seconds to Mars is the metallic post-grunge quartet led by Jared Leto -- after all these years, still best-known as Jordan Catalano on the alt-rock-era TV series "My So-Called Life", although he has been excellent in Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream" and David Fincher's "Fight Club" and "Panic Room", as well. A melange of U2 atmospherics, grunge angst, gothic brooding, and metal guitars, the band floats out of time, inspired heavily by '90s alt-rock but too clean, heavy, and facile to truly be part of that tradition, yet too indebted to the past to sound like part of the 2000s, either. Their second album, 2005's "A Beautiful Lie" -- whose title is uncomfortably close to Nine Inch Nails' "Terrible Lie" (and is most likely not borrowed from the Amazing Rhythm Aces' 1975 song of the same name, either) -- is a little tighter and more streamlined than their eponymous 2002 debut, but the basic angst-ridden rock remains the same. Leto is a little too breathy at times and a little too inclined to dive into a full-throated scream, and the bandmembers are capable enough at shifting from tense quiet verses to piledriving, heavy choruses, but they borrow the worst habits from all their favorite groups, and then assemble them in earnest fashion, playing clichés as if they were revelations. It's a bleak collection of self-absorbed gloom-rock, a record where an allusion to the title of the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" is treated as something soul-searching and profound (of course, it does hurt that "A Beautiful Lie" is being released just a month before "Just Like Heaven" is being borrowed for the title of a Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy). It's clear that Leto and the rest of 30 Seconds to Mars really mean it -- this is as earnest as an emo record -- but instead of making "A Beautiful Lie" somewhat endearing, that sincerity makes it more embarrassing, since the bandmembers have poured their hearts into music this turgid. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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