30 Seconds To Mars 'This Is War' album

After 18 months of work, Thirty Seconds to Mars are closing in on the release of an album that includes Tibetan monks, a screaming hawk, and the voices of fans' from eight countries along with Jared Leto's soaring vocals. This Is War, the follow to A Beautiful Lie, will be released via Virgin/Capitol Records on November 24th. The album was produced by Flood (U2, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails), Steve Lillywhite (The Rolling Stones, U2) and Thirty Seconds To Mars and will have 2000 different album covers featuring individual photos of fans from around the world.

"It's representative of the battles that we were fighting, us with the record label, creative battles, personal demons," says Leto. "We've discussed, like, is it relevant anymore? Some of the battles - obviously the creative, and the battles with the record label, have all come to pass, but I think it really still represents this record in the best way possible, so This Is War.... It represents too clearly this period of time in our lives."

He added that the title does not have to literally refer to any specific fight. "Also come the ideas about winning, ideas about compromise, about defeat, victory of course. But I think as I've tossed it around, it's always been the working title for the record as well, This Is War, so it's been important because I think it really represented the goal in a good way, a strong way."

"To me, the songs are like scenes in a film or chapters in a book and they kind of work with each other in a way that they don't work and would never work separately." Listening to This Is War in full, he said, "would be the best way to understand and to get the best sense of what the intentions were."

The first single, "Kings And Queens", which arrives at radio on October 6th, opens with a wild hawk scream, recorded live over the band's work space, the song includes a heavy contribution from the band's fans, captured singing a chorus created from layers of the band's "summit" recordings. Leto said the title and theme were inspired by a book found at the band's South African work space, but that it "ended up being a good metaphor" for world events from the past year.

Thirty Seconds To Mars consists of: Jared Leto (vocals, guitar, songwriter), Shannon Leto (drums) and Tomo Milicevic (guitar).

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30 Seconds To Mars - This Is War