30 Seconds to Mars

This Is War

Virgin Records

Rocks like: Blaqk Audio, The Used

Grade:… 30 Seconds to Mars

This Is War

Virgin Records

Rocks like: Blaqk Audio, The Used

Grade: D-

I didn’t have to listen to 30 Seconds to Mars’ latest endeavor This is War very long before I felt uninspired enough to write this review. Let’s just say that you know an album is bad when, upon listening to it, you feel just a tad bit embarrassed for liking the band’s prior work. I begrudgingly finished the album, and my first impression remained unchanged.

The first track to this set of spacey and heavily produced songs is titled “Escape,” and honestly, it made me want to do just that.

Most of the song is an instrumental buildup to what one would expect to be some epic, lyrical, defining words of wisdom, or maybe just some good music.

Alas, listeners are left with poetry reminiscent of their elementary-school days that is screeched with feigned torture and anguish by the group’s vocalist, Jared Leto.

As if we haven’t suffered enough by then, those listeners who are yet enduring are quite literally assaulted by a chorus of what sounds to be pre-pubescent boys saying “This Is War.” Perhaps this was supposed to pass for the song’s nonexistent epic denouement. If so, I say it failed.

As if that wasn’t enough, then there is the title track, “This Is War.” This one sounded slightly promising at first, but its melodrama, like that of the other songs on the album, failed to deliver.

By the end of the song, Leto claims to have “won the war,” but to which war, I must ask, is he referring?

With regard to the battle to make people like its album, I’d say that right about now the band is lying, bloodied and beaten, amidst the shattered hopes of coming out with a decent album, as opposed to the phony and over-worked hoohah it has sent out into the world. Leto must have been referring to something else … but I guess we’ll never know.

30 Seconds to Mars’ “Kings & Queens”: