THE BAND
Jared Leto - Vocals/Guitar
Shannon Leto - drums
Tomo Milicevic - guitar/keyboards/synths
Tim Kelleher is currently playing bass. No one is certain if he is temporary, or permanent
NAME
Shannon says, "It comes from an old, old book. The Argus Apocraphex. It’s a quote in the book. That’s where part of the name came from. Really it’s about exponential growth in technology. It’s about that in society we’re in this constant state of projection that everything is “Now, now, now, now.†It’s hard to retain any information with so many things coming at you. It’s really almost like we’re 30 seconds from Mars, conceptually speaking. There is a lot more than that entails. It’s big. It’s theatrical. It makes sense with the music, the way the name is and the music sounds.
Jared says, "For us, the name 30 Seconds To Mars has little to do with space, the universe or anything like that. It is a name that works on several different levels. Most importantly, it is a good representation of our sound. It's a phrase that is lyrical, suggestive, cinematic, and filled with immediacy. It has some sense of otherness to it. The concept of space is so overwhelming and all encompassing I doubt there is a song written that doesn't fall within it."
PHOENIX
The band's phoenix logo (which the band named "Mythra") bears the phrase "Provehito in Altum", the band's motto. The phoenix is a mythological creature from ancient Egyptian and Grecian times. It is a beautiful bird made of flame, who, upon its death, is reborn from its very ashes to live again. The phoenix is a symbol of rebirth, divinity and perseverence, both of which are connected to lyics on the band's first album ("Capricorn"). 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.
TRINITY
(THE TRINITY OF THE SKULLS) East symbol was created for the second album " A Beautiful Lie " that contains the name of the band, the Glyphic number 1, three skulls more three arrows and the inscription " Provehito in Altum ".
THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SKULL Is the most common symbol, which implies the representation of the death or the mortality of the human being.
THE TRINITY Comes from the Latin and means " Three in one ". The ideas of the triads arose from many suggestive relations but principally due to three joints of the fingers, and because there was necessary a minimum of three legs to stabilize a stool, because three points of support could support a shop; in addition, the early man in a lot of time could not count beyond three.
Apart from certain natural, such couples as the past and the present, the day and the night, the heat and the cold, the masculine thing and the feminine thing, the man generally tends to think about triads: yesterday, today and tomorrow; dawn, midday and late afternoon; father, mother and son. Three times are applauded to the victorious one.
The dead men are buried to the third day, and the ghost is appeased by means of three water ablutions.
It means also the Divine reality, which remains purified and sanctified of the comprehension of the human beings and which can never be imagined by the people of wisdom and intelligence, is exempt from any conception. This Lordly Reality does not admit divisions, so division and multiplicity are not accidents that happen to the one that Exists for Yes Same, but they are properties of the creatures, which in turn are beings fix quotas.
ARROW [MARS ARMY]
It is also the Norse rune for "tyr/tiwaz" (the Norse sky-god), which means: "Honor, justice, leadership and authority. Analysis, rationality. Knowing where one's true strengths lie. Willingness to self-sacrifice. Victory and success in any competition or in legal matters. Tiwaz Reversed or Merkstave: One's energy and creative flow are blocked. Mental paralysis, over-analysis, over-sacrifice, injustice, imbalance. Strife, war, conflict, failure in competition. Dwindling passion, difficulties in communication, and possibly separation.
The X [ECHELON]
The X hieroglyph is a numerical symbol for multiplication ('coming together'), whereas in a spatial sense, it symbolizes division ('unifying under one banner').
Echelon is the street team for the band 30 Seconds to Mars. [Echelon] is a division of MARS ARMY, which helps in bringing friends to the shows, convincing friends to buy band merchandise, phoning local radio stations to request the band's songs, putting up posters, posting to band forums or related bulletin boards online, and maintaining zines or websites dedicated to the band. It is also a name of one of their songs in the album "30 Seconds to Mars". As one of the ECHELON, you will be trained to broadcast the knowledge and details of the band.
ECHELON: an arrangement of a body of troops with its units each somewhat to the left or right of the one in the rear like a series of steps ; any unit or group acting in a disciplined or organized manner ; a group of individuals at a particular level or grade in an organization.
GLYPHS
1st Symbol: Intertwined 3's standing for 30.
2nd Symbol: Clock Hands pointing counterclockwise supposed to mean seconds.
3rd Symbol: An inverted Roman Numeral of 2 (to).
4th Symbol: Drawing of Mars. The two dots represent Phobos and Deimos, Mars' moons.
1st symbol: It is 3 represents 30.
2nd symbol: clock of sand represents the second ones.
3rd symbol: A circle divided in 2 parts, represents the word "to".
4th symbol: The line of the center represents to mars and the wings to his 2 moons.
THE STORY
30 Seconds to Mars' first, self-titled, album, was produced by Bob Ezrin and Brian Virtue, and sold just over 100,000 copies. The band’s widescreen sound was adrenalized and nuanced, balancing huge guitars with anthemic vocal lines and organic synthesizers with electronic underpinnings. The band’s very name implies the accelerated society we live in, suggesting that an escape may be as close as a few seconds away. But this is not science fiction. 30 Seconds To Mars’ songs are real stories and real moments that examine personal human experience. Lyrically, the songs are filled with metaphors and moments of fantasy that capture the imagination.
30 Seconds To Mars retreated to the isolation of Wyoming’s big sky country to record the album. The band and Ezrin chose an empty warehouse lot on 15,000 acres, striving for the precise location that would enhance their sound. An intense period of preproduction began, starting with an almost obsessive examination of close to 50 songs. After an initial period of chaos, a fruitful relationship bloomed between the musicians and producer, leading to an artistically rewarding work atmosphere. The expansive frontier helped feed their imagination and their playing. Although the songs had already been written, nothing was left untouched as they massaged them frame-by-frame into distinguished guitar riffs and tones and sculpted every last note and detail to achieve their goal.
While the subjects of their songs are engaged in their own searches, 30 Seconds To Mars is involved in a search of their own to produce something unique in today’s world of disposable music--something with depth and substance, a work that is built to last.
They started touring for this album in 2002 and finished in mid-2003. Even before the album was released, Puddle of Mudd took the unusual step of inviting 30 Seconds To Mars to open a six-week tour for them in the spring of 2002, even though they were unknown and no one had yet heard their music on the radio.
Matt Wachter later joined the band as bassist and keyboard player in 2001. After a few different 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 Milicevic to round out the band's roster, in 2003. Tomo was previously in a band called, "MORPHIC".
The band's second album, A Beautiful Lie, was released on August 30, 2005. For this effort, the band traveled (during the course of three years) to four different continents, including five different countries, to perfect their sound. The album was produced by Josh Abraham, who also helped produce Orgy, Velvet Revolver, and Linkin Park.
"On the first record I created a world, then hid behind it," Jared says. "With A Beautiful Lie, it was time to take a more personal and less cerebral approach. Although this record is still full of conceptual elements and thematic ideas it is ultimately much more wrapped around the heart than the head. It's about brutal honesty, growth, change. It's an incredibly intimate look into a life that is in the crossroads. A raw emotional journey. A story of life, love, death, pain, joy, and passion. Of what it is to be human."
In addition to being more lyrically direct, A Beautiful Lie has undergone a musical transformation as well. Progressive, multi-tracked passages have been replaced by leaner and far more impacting constructs and some of the eclecticism has been focused in order to compliment the honesty of the songwriting. "We wanted to focus on the insides of the song," Jared says. "To cut away anything extraneous. To get to the truth of it all. For us, it wasn't about how much we could do but about how little. That was the beginning of a lot of challenges. I worked hard to create something very special and different the first time around, sonically and conceptually. And that first CD will always be that, no matter what. But, in order to move forward you have to leave some things behind. That was not always the easiest thing to do. In some ways, it was the birth of something new and the death of something old."
The results are transcendent. The first single, "Attack," is a dynamic expression of rebirth and renewal that features energetic keyboards, vast, abrasive guitars, and infectious vocals, which soar from a pain-stricken wail to an intimate whisper. "The Kill" is more reflective, driven by beautifully complex guitars and a primal beat that segue into an epic, anthemic refrain, and "Was It A Dream" is an intimate, melodic, and surreal experience, pulsing with a moody rhythm that's equally redolent of the Cure and U2.
"We needed this album to be something that reset the bar for us," Leto says. "As proud as we are of our previous efforts, I really wanted to destroy the first record by making a second one. The last thing we wanted to do was make the same record twice."
"It was important for it to be emotionally accessible, and also stripped down and raw," says Jared's brother, drummer Shannon. "We needed this record to sound really genuine and honest."
Dramatic transformation often comes at a price and 30 Seconds To Mars is no exception. The musical and lyrical changes that resonate throughout A Beautiful Lie reflect the sometimes painful development Jared and his bandmates underwent before and during the creation of the record.
"There were a lot of intense changes taking place for us during the making of this project, personally and artistically," Jared says. "Change was an important theme this time around and you can feel it. However, as dark and reflective as some of the moments on this CD can be, there is always a huge sense of optimism and celebration. It was a battle. And in a way, it's about going to war. Going to war with yourself and winning."
"When we toured for the last album, we were going to war every night," adds Shannon." "We played well over 300 shows, and eventually we won that battle. Now that we've accomplished that, this record was more about us continuing to grow and make really great songs."
Jared started penning A Beautiful Lie during the tour for the band's debut, and eventually ended up writing the album in five different countries on four different continents and recording from L.A. to N.Y.C. to South Africa. The title track and three other songs were composed in Cape Town, South Africa, and eventually the bandmates joined him in South Africa to work on the tracks. It was during this period that Jared came up with the title for the record.
"I was living in this house overlooking the ocean and it was breathtakingly beautiful," he explains. "But amidst all of this, there was an overwhelming amount of contradiction between the beauty of nature and the destruction of man. I saw this a lot as I traveled the world from Asia to Europe and at home. It made me think about these contradictions in life, the choices we make to believe in something at the cost of something else, whether it's being in a relationship or going to war. But there's something incredibly inspiring, optimistic, and romantic about making those choices. Especially considering that no matter what, we all collectively choose to keep moving forward."
Joining the Leto brothers in the studio for the first time were guitarist Tomo Milicevic and bassist Matt Wachter, both of whom toured for the first 30 Seconds To Mars album. On that disc, Jared recorded all of the guitar, bass, and synth parts as well as the vocals, with Shannon playing the drums, but this time, a more collaborative route developed, which was new and exciting, but very challenging as well. Ultimately, it resulted in a very rewarding and productive collaboration.
"At first we weren't really sure what our role was gonna be," Milicevic says. "But it became more defined as time went on. Jared would bring in the songs and we would all help shape them into what they became, which wasn't always easy. I think the mantra for this record should be, 'Through great struggle comes great art.'"
"It was a little strange to have other people involved in the process because I can be very protective of the music," admits Jared. "In the past, it was very difficult for me to let other people participate because it was such a special, private, and personal experience for my brother and I. Now, for the first time, we have a group of four people who have the same vision, share the same tastes and dreams. And it's amazing because we all work so well together."
For their last album, 30 Seconds To Mars entered the studio with legendary producer Bob Ezrin. This time, they recruited Josh Abraham, who produced the Grammy winning Velvet Revolver record. 30 Seconds To Mars began in April 2004 and worked on and off in six different studios before finishing the album. Jared credits Abraham for expediting the process.
"I'm very methodical and obsessive and will beat something to death to get something right, and Josh isn't like that at all," he says. "He likes to keep things organic. He doesn't over-think or overdo anything, which helped keep things sounding spontaneous."
"We didn't do 10 million takes of everything, which is maybe why the record has a really raw feel," Wachter says. "It became more about capturing the initial thought, the first expression."
30 Seconds To Mars wrote 40 songs for A Beautiful Lie before paring it down to the 10 that appear on the album. Making the cuts wasn't only difficult, it was emotionally draining. It wasn't a case of Jared being unable to toss his babies into the sea, it was more a matter of the singer prematurely throwing away too many of his offspring. At one point or another, he scrapped, "The Kill," "From Yesterday," "The Story," and even "Attack."
"I had worked on that song from Morocco to Thailand to L.A. and it always worked when I played it by myself on acoustic guitar, but for some reason we couldn't bring the song to life with the band, so I tossed it," Jared says. "Then one night I was sitting outside with my acoustic guitar and Josh Abraham walked out. As a joke I said very sarcastically, 'Hey, you wanna hear a hit song?' And, I started playing 'Attack' on the acoustic. After the first chorus, he stopped me and said, 'That's the best song you have. We have to record that.' Now its our first single."
From start to finish, A Beautiful Lie is a story riddled with pain, frustration, ambition, and ultimately purification. It's not a concept album per se, but it's certainly conceptual, unraveling like scenes from a spellbinding film about a man on the precipice of collapse who has to change in order to move forward.
"Change was an important theme for all of us this time around and a cycle that everyone goes through many times in their lives," Jared explains. "I wanted each song to be like a chapter in a book. Together, they add up to make the story, but individually, every chapter has to have its own color, its own expression, its own personality."
From the surreal, ominous strains of the title track to the throbbing beat of "The Fantasy," from the pensive, acoustic strumming of "A Modern Myth," to the melancholy melody of "The Story," A Beautiful Lie is a bracing soundtrack to a life in turmoil and a testament to the durability of the human spirit.
"I've always been inspired by bands that express different emotions and paint vivid pictures with sound, like U2, the Cure, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd," Jared says. "But we're also interested in being as modern as we can. We're striving to do something different, to look forward rather than back, to be free from the shadows of our inspiration, and to continue, with our voice to make our mark.
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