Album Review: This is War

30 seconds to mars added a new CD to their collection making it total 3 studio albums. They named it This is War; I'm pretty sure it refers to a battle with their record company, Virgin Recods, about the album. The battle was about the band signing a contract with Virgin Records in 1999 stating they would produce 3 albums by the summer 2009. After 30 Seconds to Mars failed to deliver the 3 albums, the company filed a $30 mil lawsuit against them! Long story short, Jared Leto stated the fact that by that time, the contract was 9 years old and by law, a contract in that state was only valid for 7 years...making this contract obsolete. They won the battle and resigned with EMI Records. Bad move Virgin Records.

I listened to the CD thoroughly and I would only give it a 3.5/5.

What I loved: =)
The songs were all pretty great. They were more "complicated" this time around, using more instruments and combining more musical elements than their previous albums. Jared's vocals amazed me as usual. :) From the songs, you can tell they're growing as a band which is pretty awesome. It's so fun to watch a band grow and develop into their own and see how it affects their music.
Definite listen-to's are Night of the Hunter (and the Flood remix) and the song This is War. Also, if you love their first single Kings and Queens which was on the radio, you MUST listen to the album version!!!! They edited the song down a minute or two to make it shorter and more radio friendly but you need to hear the longer version! There's more build up to the good parts like Jared's screaming course and gives the song more power (Y).
What I didn't like: =(
They named the CD "This is War"...giving the album an overall theme.
Which is okay...usually.
They picked that theme of war, battles, victims, victory and fighting for whats right but EVERY song has to do with just that. Every song has relatively the same kind of lyrics all revolving around some sort of war-related theme. By sticking extremely close to the album theme, they eliminated any potential for true variety in the songs. Each individual song is fantastic on its own, don't get me wrong, but listening to the songs as a collective was kind of daunting by the end of the CD because you were tired of hearing about the exact same thing in every song...

Oh my .....well hello to you too! ;)