Thirty Seconds to Mars

Thirty Seconds to Mars

30 Seconds to Mars (or Thirty Seconds to Mars) is an alternative rock band from Los Angeles, California featuring actor Jared Leto as the lead vocalist.

History

Created in 1998 by Jared Leto and his brother, Shannon, 30 Seconds to Mars began as a small family project. Things began to speed up quickly, and Matt Wachter later joined the band as bassist and keyboard player. After a small revolving door 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' and he goes on to talk about the expediential 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."

30 Seconds to Mars' first, self-titled album, produced by Bob Ezrin, was released in 2002 to mixed reviews and achieved sales of just over 100,000. 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 and also to allow for Jared's film career. The album was produced by Josh Abraham, whose producing credits also include Orgy, Velvet Revolver, and Linkin Park.

Because A Beautiful Lie 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 of the same name). To further promote the album, the band also enclosed "golden tickets" in 12 copies, which grant 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". The music video is loosely based on the film 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, and several other bands including Street Drum Corps. 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. 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, and Download. Following other commitments, they will begin working on their third album.

On March 1, 2007, bassist Matt Wachter announced his departure from the band live on stage during the band's El Paso, Texas "Taste of Chaos" set. This was confirmed the following day with a statement on the band's website. He has since been replaced by Tim Kelleher (not the actor of the same name), who has been seen playing at the band's concerts. It is unknown if this is a temporary or permanent change. Wachter has also since joined Angels and Airwaves.

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 has announced that "A Beautiful Lie" had won and would be the next single.

On July 21, 2007, it was announced that 30 Seconds To Mars had won second place in the Jabra Music Best Band in the World contest, based on votings around the world.

On August 8th, 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 24th, they had only won the award for 'Best Single,' which was The Kill. The other award was lost to Madina Lake.

Due to their success in the UK at the Kerrang! Awards, the band is re-releasing the single, "The Kill" on the 24th September 2007 on CD and 7" to try and improve on it's current best UK Chart position of #64.

Logo

File:31129069l0ly.jpg

The band's phoenix 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". 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 zines or websites dedicated to the band. It is also a name of one of their songs in the album "30 Seconds to Mars".

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. "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 Son/The Believer" which was initially written for the self-titled album but was scrapped during recording, and "Sisters of Heresy".

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".

Band members

Current

• Jared Leto - vocals, rhythm guitar (1998-present)
• Tomo Miličević - lead guitar (2003-present)
• Shannon Leto - drums, guitar (1998-present)

Former

• Matt Wachter - bass, keyboard (2001-2007)
• Solon Bixler - guitar (2001-2003)
• Kevin Drake - guitar (2001-2002)

Touring

• Tim Kelleher - bass (2007-present)

Discography

Albums

Year	Title	Chart positions
		U.S.	UK	Australia	Italy	Finland	New Zealand
2002	30 Seconds to Mars Debut studio album Released: August 27, 2002 Formats: CD	107	-	-	-	-	-
2005	A Beautiful Lie Second studio album Released: August 30, 2005 Formats: CD, CD/DVD, digital download	36	51	27	11	15	20

Singles

Year	Title	Chart positions							Album
		U.S. Hot 100	U.S. Modern Rock	U.S. Mainstream Rock	UK Singles Chart	New Zealand Singles	Australian Singles Chart	Italian Singles Chart
2002	"Capricorn (A Brand New Name)"	-	-	31	-	-	-	-	30 Seconds to Mars
2002	"Edge of the Earth"	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	30 Seconds to Mars
2005	"Attack"	-	20	38	148	-	-	-	A Beautiful Lie
2006	"The Kill"	65	3	14	57	22	20	-	A Beautiful Lie
2006	"From Yesterday"	76	1	11	-	13	34	45	A Beautiful Lie
2007	"A Beautiful Lie"	-	37	-	-	-	-	-	A Beautiful Lie

Music videos

• "Capricorn (A Brand New Name)" (2002) from 30 Seconds to Mars
• "Edge of the Earth" (2002) from 30 Seconds to Mars
• "Attack" (2005) from A Beautiful Lie
• "The Kill" (2006) from A Beautiful Lie
• "From Yesterday" (2006) from A Beautiful Lie
• "A Beautiful Lie" (2007) from A Beautiful Lie (in the works)

Songs featured in media

• "Echelon" (The Core) (2003)
• "Attack" (Madden NFL 06) (2005)
• "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)

External links

• 30 Seconds to Mars' official website
• 30 Seconds to Mars' official MySpace page
• 30 Seconds to Mars' official PureVolume page