Today's Pick

Thirty Seconds To Mars have unveiled a brand-new worldwide tour live video for their new single, "Do Or Die," the second single from American stadium emo-rockers' recent fourth studio album, "Love, Lust, Faith + Dreams," released in stores last May via Virgin Records and Universal. And just as you've come to expect from the trio, "Do Or Die," which clocks in at a whopping seven minutes, is basically a love letter to a fanbase, complete with testimonials, behind-the-scenes clips and some massive crowd shots with frontman Jared Leto in full messianic mode.
The concept album revolves around four themes after which the album is named. It is recognized by four colors, with the color Red stands for Love, Green for Lust, Yellow for Faith and Blue/Purple for Dreams. Written and produced by Leto, "Do Or Die," is an anthemic rock song with a real message behind. According to Leto, this propulsive rocker is "about standing up and living out your dreams." The track chronicles the band's backstage and onstage antics as they work to break a world record for the number of live shows performed during a single album cycle. This new clip is a love letter to the Echelon, and the explosive exchange of energy that takes place whenever they perform for them.
Shot during the band's 2013 tour in Europe, and directed as usual by Leto's "Bartholomew Cubbins" pseudonym, the seven-minute clip, is mostly a performance video featuring a lot concert footage, backstage footage, fan commentary, and random scenes, including their performance in Soho Square this summer when they performed a surprise busking set and self-shot studio footage and offers fans an insight into the band behind the scenes. It is vibrant and fans from all over the world are showcased in discussing how much Thirty Seconds To Mars means to them.
The emotional clip opens on a young man describing the pain of his father's unexpected death, how he dealt with the loss, how he continues to do so, and the role that music has played throughout the entire grieving process. Throughout cancer scares, divorce, job loss, death, and nearly anything else you could think of, music has helped these individuals persevere and continue to enjoy life. More confessionals are added to the mix, claiming that music is everything from a drug to the reason why they're even alive. Then, the video cuts to high-quality live performance footage, only occasionally swapping in scenes of the band helming a gigantic sailing ship.

After two weeks of wrangling, protesting and explaining, 30 Seconds to Mars finally unveiled the "full-length explicit director's cut" (as frontman Jared Leto put it) of their epic "Hurricane" video, which, oddly enough, ended up being two seconds shorter than the version that premiered on MTV a month ago. The original uncensored video was banned by MTV and several other TV channels, due to heavy censorship. The new, 13-minute clip for "Hurricane" aims to be more like a blockbuster movie than a music video, an arty, provocative sci-fi epic, with cinematic-style titles, subtitles, and chapters, and the Los Angeles based rock band's one-note, anthemic rock acting as its score.
"Hurricane" is one of tracks from 30 Seconds to Mars's newest third studio album "This Is War." Leto wrote this piano driven ballad in Berlin in the winter in 2007. He said. "It was winter, it was getting dark at like 3:30 in the afternoon, and it could go either way. It could be incredibly comforting or incredibly depressing. Thankfully, it was a little bit of both. It was inspiring nonetheless." Lead guitarist Tomo commented on this song: "It's dark and there's not much guitar on it, other than some acoustic in the beginning and a little bit in the chorus. Other than that, it's all keyboards. But that's cool. We're not some egotistical rock band that has to dazzle everybody with our shred skills. We just want to do what's right for the song."
The Leto-directed video was shot in New York. Leto described its concept to MTV News: "It's a surrealistic nightmare dream-fantasy through the desolate empty streets of New York City at night," he said. "There's no people, there's no cars and you see the band as we encounter some fears and some fetishes, a series of challenges. It's a really ambitious, really cinematic short film." Leto never goes halfway. That's why the epic video sometimes feels like a summer blockbuster squished down into a 13-minute box. Part "Eyes Wide Shut" fetish flick, part action movie and all a bit confusing, the video that director Leto himself has been promising will be "very sexual," violent and a "surrealistic nightmare dream-fantasy" is all those things and more. Plus a lot of things we can't even really get into here.
Over 13 minutes, the censored version of mini-movie is broken into three chapters: Birth, Life, and Death, It follows the three members of 30 Seconds to Mars through a dark and twisted thriller set in a nearly empty New York City. Full of haunting, surreal images of men in masks and woman in bondage gear, the video was dark enough to warrant a warning during the intro that some of the scenes may be offensive to some viewers. All disturbing psychoanalysis aside, 'Hurricane' is one of the most impressive videos in years.

Multi-platinum rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars (30STM), who were just nominated for four 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, has released its concert-centric music video for their new single "Closer to the Edge," the seventh track and the third single from their third studio album "This Is War." The epic video was directed by Bartholomew Cubbins and contains concert footage and fan commentary from about 30 performances on the road to 89 cities throughout 27 countries during the first leg of the band's "Into the Wild" world tour, where they played in front of over 1.3 million fans.
"Closer to the Edge," has topped UK Rock Singles and climbing the airplay charts across Europe. It emphasize atmospheric flourishes over melodic assurance. Tomo Milicevic, the lead guitarist of 30STM, said about the song: "A really interesting track. We call it our 'pop' song, but when you really listen to it, you realize that it has a lot of rock glory in it. It's a song that fools you, and I like that. Jared really pushed himself as a songwriter here in that he was trying to reach for a new way of presenting music that was very accessible but not spoon-feed it to the audience. He has a lot of respect for the fans in that way. The guy's a trip - very inspiring to be around and work with."
The video opens with testimonials from sad-eyed 30STM fans, espousing their views on life. Each of them is alone in their own particular way, it would seem, though, through the music of 30STM, they find a space in which they can coexist with others just like them. They may be outcasts in their high schools or towns, but at a 30STM show, they are anything but. They are, as a title card in the video puts it, part of "The Family." Documenting your life on the bus is as much a rite of passage as getting your first platinum plaque, and in keeping with pretty much everything they do, 30STM have taken the concept to dizzying, unabashedly all-encompassing heights. They aim to uplift, to inspire, to save, and "Closer to the Edge" is their document of that mission.
Created in 1998 in Los Angeles, by actor Jared Leto and his Older brother, Shannon, 30STM found success with a mix of post-grunge, screamo, and hard rock. With their brand-new "Closer to the Edge" video, 30STM have joined a special fraternity. "Closer to the Edge" is different because it is darn-near 100% about the fans themselves: their lives and loves and fears, and how all of those things motivated them to attend a 30STM show in the first place. They are the stars, they are the main attraction. The members of the band are basically secondary characters in the thing.

The rock band, Thirty Seconds To Mars ('30STM') finally unveil an official epic short film/video in support of the lead single "Kings And Queens," known as "The Ride," off their forthcoming third studio album "This Is War" which they have been going through in getting the album done for two years, and will be released December 8.
The bond '30STM' formed in 1998 by actor Jared Leto as vocalist, rhythm guitarist and songwriter, with his brother, Shannon began as a small family project. Matt Wachter later joined the band as bassist and keyboard player. After working with a number of guitarists, the three auditioned Tomo Milicevic to round out the band's roster. According to an interview from Virgin Records, "[The band's name] actually comes from a thesis title that the band found online that was written by a former Harvard professor. What it means to us is, we thought it best described our music, in short."
'30STM' have already gone to great lengths to make sure that their "Kings and Queens" video is a thoroughly epic production. They've filmed in and around some of Los Angeles' most iconic landmarks, recruited a large cast of extras and all manner of surrealist street performers to make cameos. So naturally, they want to roll the thing out in an equally epic manner. The video had two main themes: One featuring a fire-breathing clown and an army of gas mask-wearing cyclists, and the band among them, riding in downtown Los Angeles. The other part of the video simply features the band playing on a cliff edge of some sort that overlooks the city. These two themes alternate between each other during the course of the video.
The frontman Jared has been quoted saying that the video was "basically make a love letter to Los Angeles and to celebrate that side of the world." He discussed the making of the video in an interview with MTV: "We're doing all-night shoots. That was my big, dumb idea, to shoot at night, but I think this city is a beautiful place at night, and we have these empty streets, and it's kind of a haunting, forgotten landscape," the vocalist continued. "It's been an incredible adventure, but it's also been really difficult, because there are so many people, and we're shutting down streets of Los Angeles."
This single "Kings And Queens" shows a definite evolution of their musical style, but I definitely would not classify it as "pop". Instead, I hear traces of Angels & Airwaves and U2 in "Kings and Queens," mixed with classic 30 Seconds. So, overall, an epic single! check it out courtesy of Rock Sound below!