Thirty Seconds To Mars have a habit of tapping into the musical zeitgeist. Their self-titled debut capitalised on the fallout from nu-metal at the start of the millennium, while their breakthrough, ‘A Beautiful Lie’, rode high on the emo wave of mid-2000s. More recent releases - ‘This is War’ and ‘Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams’ - followed the trend of infusing anthemic guitar music with outsized electronics.
This musical piggy-backing may have worked in the band’s favour initially but, like a knock-off rum and coke that’s lost all its fizz, their new album, ‘America’, is just too stale. It feels like the band’s famed frontman and all round driving force, Jared Leto, has completely lost touch with his own music and the evolving wider scene.
The decision to hire a raft of EDM producers - Zedd and Yellow Claw among them - would have you believe otherwise, but the results tell a different story. Hail To The Victor, for example, is an exercise in cramming in as many musical clichés (drops, hand claps, trap-style hi-hats) from the past three years into one song as possible.
Leto appears to have his finger on the pulse, but he’s tapped into a bloodless vein. And for those who are looking for casual hit of commercial rock music - something that previous albums have provided - just forget about it. You’ll likely find more edge on a pair of children’s safety scissors.
But what about that title? ‘America’, stylised promotionally in big, fat caps. Leto must have something meaningful to say about the current state of his country, right? Wrong again. All we get here is the odd throwaway line - “Times are changing,” or “What are we fighting for?” - backed up with a bunch of woahs instead of any insightful analysis.
And the malaise isn’t confined to the band’s core members. A$AP Rocky pops up on One Track Mind, uttering a line so awful you can almost hear part of the rapper die as he does so: “Heard it's only Thirty Seconds To Mars, then it take you even less just to get to my heart.” The only real plus points here are that Leto hasn’t lost the ability to belt out a line and he still knows how to make a tune sound big. But that’s not enough, is it?
30 Seconds to Mars Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sat May 26 2018 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Spillers Wharf
Tue May 29 2018 - BELFAST SSE Arena Belfast
Wed May 30 2018 - DUBLIN 3Arena
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