30 Seconds to Mars

30 Seconds to Mars
30 Seconds to Mars at the MTV Video Music Awards.
Background information
Origin	Los Angeles, California, USA
Genre(s)	[1][2][3] Post-grunge[4][5] Post-hardcore[6]
Years active	1998–present
Label(s)	Immortal, Virgin
Associated acts	Angels & Airwaves Great Northern The Used
Website	Official website
Members
Jared Leto Tomo Miličević Shannon Leto
Former members
Matt Wachter Solon Bixler Kevin Drake

30 Seconds to Mars (occasionally Thirty Seconds to Mars, or 30STM) are an American post-hardcore band from Los Angeles, California, featuring actor Jared Leto as the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and songwriter.

History

Formation

Created in 1998 by Jared Leto with his brother, Shannon. 30 Seconds to Mars began as a small family project. Matt Wachter later joined the band as bassist and keyboard player. After working with a number of guitarists (as the band's first two guitarists, Kevin Drake and Solon Bixler, left the band due to issues primarily related to touring), the three auditioned Tomo Miličević to round out the band's roster.

According to an interview from Virgin Records, the band's name

"actually comes from a thesis that the band found online that was written by a former Harvard professor. And one of the subsections of the thesis was titled 'thirty seconds to mars [sic]' and he goes on to talk about the exponential growth of technology that relates to humans and saying that we are quite literally thirty seconds to mars. What it means to us is, we thought it best described our music, in short."^[7]

30 Seconds to Mars (2002–2005)

The band's debut album 30 Seconds to Mars, produced by Bob Ezrin, was released in 2002 to mixed reviews and achieved sales of just over 100,000. The album produced two singles, Capricorn (A Brand New Name) and Edge of the Earth. The former peaked at #31 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart.

A Beautiful Lie (2005–2008)

Their sophomore album, A Beautiful Lie, was released on August 30, 2005. Because the album was leaked five months before its release, the band decided to include two bonus tracks: "Battle of One" (an original song that was also set to be the album's title track when it was first announced) and "Hunter" (a cover of the Björk song). To further promote the album, the band also enclosed "golden tickets" in 12 copies, which granted their owners access to any 30 Seconds to Mars concert free of charge, along with backstage access.

On August 31, 2006, the band won the MTV2 Award for "The Kill" at the MTV Video Music Awards, one of their two nominations. The second nomination was for Best Rock Video; however, they lost to AFI's "Miss Murder". In the video members of the band reenact scenes from The Shining. A Beautiful Lie was certified platinum by the RIAA in January for distribution of over 1,000,000 albums.

In October, the band began their "Welcome to the Universe" tour, sponsored by MTV2. They were supported on this tour by Head Automatica, The Receiving End of Sirens, Cobra Starship, Rock Kills Kid, and several other bands including Street Drum Corps. The tour was "environmentally sound" according to a 2006 interview with then-bassist Matt Wachter. "Jared and Shannon put together this thing called Environmentour which is illustrating ways—alternatives—to kind of clean up some of the mess we leave behind. We fueled the bus with vegetable oil," he explains.^[8] On November 20, MTV2 premiered the video for "From Yesterday"; the video is the first American rock video ever shot in its entirety in the People's Republic of China.^[9] The music video is loosely based on the film The Last Emperor.

On April 29, 2007, the band performed at the Australian MTV Australia Video Music Awards, where they were nominated for three awards, winning "Best Rock Video" and "Video of the Year" for "The Kill".

As of Spring 2007, the band is supporting The Used as a part of the "Taste of Chaos" tour and have scheduled a string of dates in Europe supporting Linkin Park. They are also scheduled to play Roskilde, Rock am Ring, Pinkpop, Give It A Name Festival and Download. 30 Seconds to Mars were one of the hosts for the MTV Europe Music Awards 2008. They also won an award for the categories Rock Out and Video Star.

Virgin Records lawsuit and upcoming third studio album (2008 - Present)

Following other commitments, they will begin working on their third album. As heard in the MTV Malaysia interview with Leto, he announces they are currently in the middle of the new album. Some of the songs seem to have been sung at their overseas tour.

However, in August of 2008, Virgin Records filed a $30 million lawsuit, claiming the band refused to deliver three albums as required by its contract. According to the lawsuit, the band "repudiated" a 1999 contract in July.^[10] There is not an official release date for their third upcoming album, but recently a blog on the band's MySpace page has denied all rumors that there will be no third album - and also explains their side of the lawsuit, referring to California law and the current state of EMI Records.

Awards

Following the release of "From Yesterday" as a single, the band posted a link on their MySpace blog to vote for the next single from A Beautiful Lie. The choices available were "A Beautiful Lie", "The Fantasy", "Savior", and "The Story". Another vote was done later between the top two songs, "A Beautiful Lie" and "The Fantasy". On May 2, 2007, the band announced that "A Beautiful Lie" had won and would be the next single.

On August 8, 2007, Kerrang! announced that 30 Seconds to Mars has been nominated for two categories of the Kerrang! Awards 2007 - Best International Newcomer and Best Single - The Kill. On August 24 they had only won the award for 'Best Single,' which was The Kill. The other award was lost to Madina Lake. On November 1, 2007, the band won the MTV Europe Music Award for "Rock Out", one of the two categories they were nominated in.

On December 21, 2007, 30 Seconds to Mars won Fuse's Best of 2007 Award. They beat out Korn and had amassed over 7 million votes. 31 other bands and artists such as Justin Timberlake, Linkin Park, Gwen Stefani and Avenged Sevenfold were also included in the contest. On March 22, 2008, the band was voted the second greatest band in Kerrang!'s 100 Best Rock Bands Ever.

On March 21, 2008, 30 Seconds to Mars performed at 'My Coke Fest' in South Africa, which saw the band back on South African soil since the inception and recording of A Beautiful Lie. At a Press Conference Leto describe the experience as deeply personal, with the added hope that some new material may see the light of day on African Soil. The band played to a sold-out crowd in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

On August 2, 2008, 30 Seconds to Mars won the Best Video Stars awards for "A Beautiful Lie" music video at MTV Asia Awards 2008, in Genting, Malaysia.^[11]

On August 21 2008, 30 Seconds To Mars won two of the four Kerrang awards that they were nominated for. They won "Best International Band" and "Best Single - From Yesterday"

On October 16 2008 they won Best International Rock Band at the Los Premios MTV Latinoamérica 2008.

On November 6, 2008, they were the VIP section hosts, interviewing the likes of Kid Rock, Anastacia and Sugababes. They added to their collection with an MTV EMA Video Star for 'A Beautiful Lie' and the 'Rock Out' award, claiming that nearly all of their success is down to their fans.

List of awards and nominations

Logo

The band's phoenix logo (which the band named "Mithra") bears the phrase "Provehito in Altum", the band's motto. Roughly translated from Latin, this means "Launch forth into the deep"; but a more stylized version would be "Rocket in(to) High(ness)". The logo was primarily used for promotion of the band's debut, whereas for A Beautiful Lie, the new Trinity logo was created consisting of three skulls, along with the band's name and motto.

The Echelon

The Echelon is a publicity street team for the band 30 Seconds to Mars, which helps in bringing friends to the shows, phoning local radio stations to request the band's songs, putting up posters, posting to band forums or related bulletin boards online, and maintaining magazines or websites dedicated to the band. It is also the name of one of their songs in the album 30 Seconds to Mars.

Band members

Current

• Jared Leto – vocals, guitar (1998–present)
• Tomislav "Tomo" Miličević – lead guitar, violin, keyboard/synth (2003–present)
• Shannon Leto – drums, percussion (1998–present)

Former

• Matt Wachter – bass guitar, keyboard/synth (2001–2007)
• Solon Bixler – guitar (2001–2003)

Touring

• Tim Kelleher – bass guitar, keyboard/synth (2007–present)
• Kevin Drake – guitar (2001–2002)

Discography

Main article: 30 Seconds to Mars discography

• 30 Seconds to Mars - 2002
• A Beautiful Lie - 2005

Acoustic songs

The band made acoustic versions of songs from their second album A Beautiful Lie. Some of the acoustics have been included in some versions of the album.

• Jared Leto - vocals, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass
• Tomo Miličević - acoustic guitar, violin

Non-album tracks

In addition to the tracks on their two full-length releases thus far, the band has also recorded a few other tracks. Among these tracks are "Phase 1: Fortification" and "Valhalla", the latter of which was present on an early demo. "Phase 1: Fortification" was released on an overseas single for "Capricorn (A Brand New Name)". Another track featured on certain imported 30 Seconds to Mars titles is "Anarchy in Tokyo", a song that was recorded during the process of their self-titled debut. "Revolution" was also recorded for the self-titled album, but wasn't included because it didn't fit the theme of the album, and because of fear that listeners would take the lyrics too literally, especially after the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[15] "Occam's Razor" was also recorded, but was never included on any of the band's releases. As a result, it is considered the most difficult to locate of the five unreleased tracks.

Demo versions of songs on the band's self-titled debut were also slightly different, along with different names. For example, "Fallen" was previously called "Jupiter", and "Year Zero" was previously called "Hero". Also made available are the demo versions of "Buddha for Mary" and "93 Million Miles"; the latter originally had lyrics referring to the band Deadsy, whose members Dr. Nner and P. Exeter Blue I provided extra instrumentation on several tracks, but the lyrics were changed after the two bands were involved in a small feud.

During recent live shows, the band has premiered two new songs, one of which may end up on the new album: "Some Other Sun" and "The Believer", which were initially written for the self-titled album but was scrapped during recording, as well as live songs such as "Sisters of Heresy" and "Under Pressure / Pressure" (Name of song unsure, name based on lyrics).

On December 11, 2006, the band sent their fans a "stocking stuffer" in the form of a holiday song called "Santa Through the Back Door". It was featured on a KROQ (Los Angeles) compilation which coincided with the station's annual Almost Acoustic Christmas festival. The song also featured a spoken word intro performed by the band's roadie Mike "Colonel Buck" Bobroff who also performed the intro prior to the band's set at the festival on December 9, 2006.

In September 2007, the band also recorded a cover of Kanye West's "Stronger" for BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge.

In February 2008, the band had premiered a song during the first European blood ball in Milan, Italy. Leto said the song is called "Old Blues Song".

Songs featured in media

• "Echelon" (The Core) (2003)
• "Battle of One" (Madden NFL 07) (2006)
• "Attack" (ATV Offroad Fury 4) (2006)
• "A Beautiful Lie" (Commercial for Without a Trace) (2007)
• "The Kill" (The Invisible) (2007)
• "From Yesterday" (Commercial for New Amsterdam) (2007)
• "The Kill" (Without a Trace) (2007)
• "The Kill" (Hollyoaks) (2007)
• "The Kill" (Rock Band) (2007)
• "Attack" (Rock Band) (2007)
• "The Kill" (Guitar Hero World Tour) (2008)

References

External links

• 30 Seconds to Mars official website
• 30 Seconds To Mars Persian Fans Site
• 30 Seconds to Mars Turkish fan website
• 30 Seconds to Mars at MySpace