Earth below us

30 Seconds To Mars

30 Seconds To Mars

Virgin/Immortal Records

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30 Seconds To Mars

30 Seconds To Mars

Virgin/Immortal Records

It has become an increasingly popular trend in Hollywood for movie stars to cross over into the music industry, even if it’s with little success. For the most part, the music projects that involve movie stars are usually pumped up based on the fact that everyone knows the movies these stars have been in. Jason Shwartzman’s side project, Phantom Planet, and Kevin Bacon and his brother’s band are just two examples of these bands.

But unlike these bands, 30 Seconds To Mars doesn’t stress the fact that their lead singer is a movie star. They try to keep that on a hush-hush level, so that people will listen to the music for the music and not because Jared Leto is the lead singer, and he’s so hot.

Yes, Jared Leto is the frontman for 30 Seconds To Mars, but it’s the music that makes you want to keep their self-titled debut album on repeat. Having the look and feel of an awkward space adventure with the album art and the space oddity tracks on the CD, 30 Seconds To Mars takes you on a strange voyage that makes you think and then rock out to the hard guitars and driving drums.

With their first single “Capricorn,” 30 Seconds To Mars screams in your face as they start the CD and they don’t back off. The sounds stay in your face with heavy and serious lyrics that verge on existential like, “Edge Of The Earth,” “Buddha For Mary” and “End Of The Beginning.”

They may have a hot movie star as their lead singer, and some people may think that because Leto is a movie star, 30 Seconds To Mars will be a passing fad, but Leto spits in the critics’ faces as he shoves emotional screams into your universe bringing you into their world.