Album Review: "This Is War"

Disclaimer:
I know that 30 Seconds to Mars is already very well established as a band, and they have many devoted fans and an absolute hurricane of money surrounding anything they do, but I recently purchased "This Is War," and I felt that this blog could use a post focusing on a successfully established band.

Review:
After nearly innumerable delays, disputes with EMI, and what must have been countless hundreds of hours of labor, this massive project is finally available for the world to hear, and with much less laud than I would have expected. I only knew it was released because I wondered how close 30STM was to release, and so I checked it out, only to find that it had already been released on December 8.

"This Is War" is an outstandingly good album. It combines deep, heavy, meaningful melodies with layer upon layer of sonic atmosphere. It is quite experimental as well, however, with an assembled crowd of fans singing or chanting on several tracks, and many other artistic elements and effects heavily layered throughout. If you haven't heard anything from this album yet, I implore you to check out the links below and give it a listen before you do anything else today. If progressive, alternative, or experimental is your thing, I assure you this will strike a chord.

Throughout the album, 30STM keeps changing their sound. From "Kings and Queens" (the first single from the album) to "Vox Populi" (an epic call to arms) to "Hurricane" (a complete re-inventing of the band's sound, with vintage synth leads and a hip-hop-esque beat) to the title track "This Is War" itself, this project keeps the listener on their toes by constantly bringing new formulae and epic motifs into the mix.

Now, the album isn't perfect by any means. I do think that there are quite a few "lost" moments, where it is difficult for the listener to grasp what is going on within the overarching thematic feel of the piece, and some of the aforementioned crowd participation segments get a bit away from themselves, and are used a bit too often.

Regardless of some minor flaws in thematic development and crowd participation, "This Is War" is a stunning album. It combines some of the greatest aspects of progressive 21st century rock into a hugely ambitious piece of audible goodness. 30 Seconds to Mars have reinvented themselves again, incorporating elements so vast and varied that the musical landscapes conveyed here can take a listener around the world.

Video:
Thirty Seconds To Mars - Kings + Queens - HD

30 Seconds to Mars | MySpace Music Videos

Links:
MySpace
Official Site
last.fm
Twitter
PureVolume
"This Is War" on iTunes