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30 Seconds To Mars - 'Kings And Queens'

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Fraser McAlpine | 10:48 UK time, Tuesday, 24 November 2009

30 Seconds To Mars

People do make a lot of fuss when actors decide they would like to be pop stars, and with good reason. The two jobs are very, very different, and prospective performers require radically different levels of patience, ego, charisma, projection and, y'know, talent, in order to do either one properly. On the plus side, you have to be roughly the same amount of photogenic, and a nice smile never goes amiss.

The reason it's important to remember that Jared Leto is a film star AND a pop star (or, if you're a Kerrang! reader, "important rock star") is that his band's music is...well...cinematic. It's HUGE. So huge that important details could be missed if it's rendered through a comparatively weedy and rubbish domestic television set or tinny little iPod dock. The natural home of something as enormous as this is the silver screen, preferably a 500ft high drive-in job, in the middle of a desert on a starlit night, with a sound system as big as Budleigh Salterton.

(. See what I mean? It's even got CREDITS!)

Of course, this level of widescreen sonic hugeness is not unknown in modern rockular music, even from non-actors. In fact, it's surprising what a good job of becoming U2 this lot are doing: Better than U2 are, in fact.

You get the sense, from listening, that something MASSIVELY IMPORTANT is going on, something that Jared needs to HOWL AT THE BLAZING SKY about. He is so good at this that he often makes me think of a man with a flip-top head, hinged just behind the ears. His high notes are there to speak for every one of us who has found themselves needing to express an emotion which combines total FRUSTRATION with NOSTALGIA FOR THE BEST OF DAYS.

We've all been there, right? You sleep in, you spill a hot drink on your trousers, you pause to wipe toothpaste off your jumper, the cloth has jam on it, and you can't find your keys. You're sure that you used to be less bothered about such things, and you wish those times were with you still. What else is there to do but BELLOW?

This song is therefore best saved for moments when you need to feel heroic. It is also docked one star for having a pompous video, and because there are times when it sounds like the Twang having a steroid strop.

Three starsDownload: Out now
CD Released: November 30th

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(Fraser McAlpine)

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