30 Seconds To Mars "A Beautiful Lie" (Virgin)
By
Monday. Oct 10, 12:01 AM
The art of surprise.

In approximately five hours, 30 Seconds To Mars will take the stage at the Webster in Hartford, CT. At some point, frontman Jared Leto will fling himself from a stack of speakers into the surprised and cramped crowd and surf back to the stage. At another point, just when you think it's all over, street-style drummers will join the band on stage and rip through an inspired version of "Battle of One." At all points will the crowd go absolutely batshit insane.

But right now, the boys of 30 Seconds To Mars (Tomo on guitar, Shannon on drums, Jared on guitar and lead vocals, and Matt on bass) are sitting in the back of their tour bus discussing my accent, one-eyed oxen, girls with small feet, and how getting your dick grabbed by strangers is entirely "not appropriate." Not to mention the globetrotting travel involved in the making of their latest album A Beautiful Lie and how much they appreciate their fans (dick-grabbing aside).

We'll get to the dick-grabbing later. I promise.

Read the fine print in the liner notes of their sophomore effort, and you'll find places most people will only see on the Discovery Channel. Morocco, Alaska, South Africa, England. Okay, sure, let's get some sun and some culture in, and England is pretty cool, but Alaska?

"Not having access to that much light was an interesting prospect for us, because you know at certain times of the year they have extended periods of darkness," Jared confides. "That was an important part of making the decision."

Matt chimes in (as he could probably tell I was flummoxed by the idea of perpetual darkness as artistic inspiration) with, "I think the record would have been a much, much different record if we had spent the entire time in Los Angeles."

And it's true. A Beautiful Lie is much more emotionally and musically accessible than the debut, not only reaching across national boundaries with some ethnic inspired flair here and there, but also encompassing different genres with less production, more realism. The album sounds – dare we say it and be horribly clichéd – more mature.

"I think that our lives changed as a result of the traveling, and opportunities to see different things," Jared explains. "The subconscious is affected by the surroundings. It's in there somewhere, affecting the music."

It doesn't just affect the music: traveling together obviously bound this band into a cohesive unit. Talk turns to Tomo's deep friendship with a one-eyed ox, wading in rice paddies, and the potential ingestion of said one-eyed ox. It's all very mysterious (but entertaining) to an outsider, the boys speaking to each other in shorthand, lifts of chins and smiles communicating fond memories and gentle digs. At this point, I'm struck by how tight these guys seem, how much they genuinely like each other. Later on, they'll simultaneously become 12 year-old boys again, geeking out over some new earpiece gadgety thing (TM the technically unsound) they've taken to wearing on stage during performances. It's actually quite refreshing and lovely, especially since so many bands seem to have members that end up just barely tolerating each other. But for now, there are better things to talk about. Specifically, Björk, sex, and anticipation.

Barely a week before this interview, A Beautiful Lie hit the stores. Scheduled to land some time in mid-August, it ended up being pushed to the end of the month. Was it hard to wait for those extra two weeks, after all that anticipation?

Matt fields this one. "We were so busy – we filmed the video for 'Attack!' – there wasn't really any time to have anticipation."

Plus there was the addition of two new tracks on the release: a cover of Björk's "Hunter" and an original, "Battle of One." When asked about the Björk cover, Shannon explains, "We're huge fans of Björk, and 'Hunter' is one of our favorite songs. It has several good uses." Cue some stifled laughter from the rest of the band, and Shannon sighing. "I'm just saying, the song has a lot of good uses!" When asked what kind of uses, there's a mish-mash of overlapping responses. Jared's reply rings out over the melee, loud and clear: "It's nice to have a song that appropriate for fucking." Shannon seems relieved that his brother said it and he didn't, lounges against the couch and follows with a "yeah, that's what it was."

Talk turns to their live performances, and Jared's predilection for throwing himself into the crowd, and generally being a security guard's nightmare.

"I think I come out and I'm filled with something… bravado or something," Jared explains. "Once in a while people will grab me, or I'll go to the mosh pit and it will be crazy. I don't know, there's something about once you're on stage, and then you get off it, there's an aura around you that kind of protects you." The rest of the band agrees, and Jared continues. "But when you jump up on the barriers and then people grab your dick…" He trails off and Matt shakes his head in disgust. "This girl came up to me afterward and was like, 'I grabbed your dick!'" Take a note, Crazy Fangirls: the band are not impressed.

Dick-grabbing aside, Jared's stage antics do add to the live show: for both fans and spectators alike. There are those who get to boast, "I was there, I caught him, I made sure he didn't fall," and for the first-timers who cock their heads to the side and exclaim, "This fucker means business!"

And Tomo knows what it's like to be on both sides of the stage. "I'm a huge fan of a lot of bands. I've seen well over a thousand shows in my life." Including a good number of 30 Seconds To Mars shows. Tomo confirms that he was a big fan of the band before joining up. And he has the chops for it, as evident by his resume. "I've played on stage since I was 14. I don't know how many shows I've played, hundreds of hundreds, playing five nights a week."

And tonight is just another night, albeit a special one in that it's the last night of their tour with The Used.

"The thing that I hate about shows is I dislike seeing ones where there isn't any spontaneity involved," Jared continues. "That's what I think is completely interesting and watchable is to have an experience where you never know what's going to happen next."

Even for those who have seen the band before, that commitment to the element of surprise makes 30 Seconds To Mars pull out all the stops on stage. Tonight's insanity includes not only Jared's free fall from an extraordinary height into a crowd of mostly screaming girls wearing The Used tee shirts, but also the addition of The Street Drum Corps onstage for an extended version of "Battle of One," complete with tribal beats and head-bopping goodness.

"We always need to remember surprise," Jared says. The guys nod in agreement. And then proceed to surprise me with demands for hugs and the bestowment of extra tickets, making me blush. "Make some new friends," they tell me, thanking me for my time.

I spill off the tour bus in a daze and stumble through a not-so-nice neighborhood back to my car, which is thankfully unsullied. The night is already full of pleasant surprises.
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