30 Seconds to Mars "AMERICA" Album Review

By: James Southworth
Rating: 0.5/5 Stars

If you haven't heard 30 Seconds to Mars's hit song "The Kill (Bury Me)", chances are you are not that acquainted with the rock scene. Still, this song even had crossover pop success, and is one of the biggest and most well known rock anthems to date. I really like the song, and I enjoy most of this band's first album. Besides that, I haven't really been too into this band. It's not like I've actively disliked them or anything. In fact, on their last album I really liked the single "In the Air". But there is one specific part of this band that has turned me off from them for a while: Jared Leto. He's not a bad vocalist or actor (although he's bad in "Suicide Squad" as the Joker), but he's not nearly as good as he thinks he is. From what I've read about the guy, he seems uncomfortably disillusioned with himself, even having a bit of a Jesus complex based on how he is at concerts (from what I've heard he literally has the audience bow down to him at one point in the show). Leto's statement on the band's new album "AMERICA" had me worried, as his statement is absolutely pretentious. In discussing the album's atrocious album cover, which is a list of the top most searched sex positions according to Google, Leto said this: "For me the lists are almost like a time capsule. Independently they may surprise, entertain or provoke, but as a group they give us a sense of the culture we are a part of and the times we are living in." I don't recall a time when I laughed harder at a more idiotic statement. Really, all these random Google searches are the best embodiment of American culture you can surmise? I call BS on that. This album is as bad as the cover makes it look. It is absolutely awful, full of some of the most painful trend-hopping and usage of filler I've ever heard. If you like this album (and I pray to God that no one in their right mind does), then I'd advise you to click off this review, because it's gonna come off more like a rant.

At least with other bad albums like XXXTENTACION's "?" or Suicide Silence's self titled you could be almost fascinated at the trainwreck that was happening right in front of you. At least both artists made earnest failures, and both releases had at least one redemptive track. Something about "AMERICA" feels cynically calculated in practically every moment. There's no real effort put into these songs in any sense, from the writing to the vocals to the instrumentation. The only song that I could point out as somewhat salvageable is "Great Wide Open". This song tries to put some effort in by having an epic soundscape, and Leto's vocals don't sound absolutely processed. I like when he gets a little gritty. But still, even this song suffers from being overproduced, and the lyrics sound weirdly like a cliched Christian worship anthem. I'm wondering if the band may have purposefully been going for that, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't their intent. As far as the rest of the songs go, I detest every single one of them. I have gotten more and more tired of "Walk on Water" as I've heard it repeatedly on the radio. I guess I thought it was an okay song when I first heard it, but I've had more and more irritations with it as I've heard it more. This is one of the many songs on the album that uses "oh" as filler when the band doesn't have anything more creative to say. In fact, there is a total of ELEVEN out of the twelve tracks on this album (including the one sort of positive "Great Wide Open") that use "oh"s. I will get to how infuriated that made me very soon. Back to "Walk on Water". This song emphasizes heavily on electronics/synths, and it just makes the song sound obnoxiously over the top, when there aren't really any big stakes at hand in context of the track. The song could've been better if Leto had actually gone in depth on the political divide we are suffering in America right now. The track doesn't do this, though. It's very surface level, only mentioning Republicans and Democrats in one line. The usage of spiritual symbolism is pointless, and only seems to be there to further Leto's Christ complex.

"Walk on Water" is relatively tolerable compared to the rest of the awful garbage this release has to offer. "Dangerous Night" was an immediate turnoff for me, as it's a very standard acoustic pop love song. The subject matter about two unlike people having a risky relationship is overdone at this point, and 30STM do nothing to make the subject matter unique. Leto stuttering his vocals in the pre-chorus gets tiresome really fast, and the drop (the first of many on the rest of the album) on this song is unnecessary. At the end of the day, I don't really see anyone wanting to return to this song. The same goes to "Rescue Me" which has some awful mixing. The production on this track is embarrassing, as the electronics are blown way out of proportion. The lyrics are some of the most repetitive I've heard in a song this year, having hardly any repetition. Once again, the band are trying to make the song sound bigger than it is by using heavy synths in the background, but it comes across as melodramatic and disingenuous. Hardly any track can compare to how bad "One Track Mind" is, though. Man, did this song make me angry. For some reason, 30STM attempts to do trap in this song. The only obvious reason to me is so that they can be looked at as a trendy band, because otherwise they do nothing innovative to make their attempt at trap stand out. The band also chooses to feature A$AP Rocky on this track, and man did that make the song even worse. Both him and Leto are drowned in autotune. Rocky also delivers the most painful line on this whole album, no competition: "Heard it's only Thirty Seconds To Mars/Then it takes you even less just to get to my heart". I physically cringed and shouted in anger when I heard that line, something I rarely do in reaction to any song. Even Suicide Silence's song "Hold Me Up, Hold Me Down"- my least favorite song of last year- as a whole didn't make me as angry as that one line in this song did. Because of that, not only will this song almost definitely be my worst song of the year, it's also one of the worst songs I've ever heard.

After the forgettable instrumental "Monolith", we get yet another horrifically bad track in "Love is Madness". This one and "One Track Mind" coming one after the other is painful beyond description. I was dreading listening to this song from the get-go when I saw that Halsey was featured, who is just as pretentious as Leto is in my opinion. I guess they're passable enough as vocalists in this track, but neither one of them do a single thing to impress. They stay very one note throughout the track, with not much vocal variation from either of them. This track sounds like a B-Side to Halsey's already underwhelming album "Hopeless Fountain Kingdom". This is due to its subject matter of a wild relationship. The lyrics are one cliche after another: "I knew the moment/I looked into your eyes/Love is madness". I was cynically laughing at this point in the album as I was really getting an idea for what this album was trying to be versus what it actually is. I'll get into that at the end of my review. The second half of this album is about as angering as the first half, but in an entirely different way. The first half brought me anger more instantly because of how many painful lyrics and musical moments it had. The second half's bringing on of rage was more subtle but still effective. This second half uses "oh"s in every single track except for "Remedy". While we're on the subject of that track, it's a very forgettable ballad that goes no where, and still repeats a lot of the same lines over and over, so it's essentially filler, just in a different way from the rest of the songs here. There's not a one track that truly stands out in the second half. "Hail to the Victor" and "Dawn Will Rise" both try to be these soaring epic tracks, but both lose out with no interesting lyrics, over processed vocals from Leto, and obnoxious usage of synths. Where exactly is the band for this whole album? It sounds like not a one of them is contributing anything. "Live Like a Dream" tries to be pseudo-inspirational, but falls incredibly short, especially with it using "oh" and "ooh" more than any other song on the album. "Rider" is a fitting end to this album, as it's just as much pop garbage as anything else on here, and uses the filler "oh"s along with generic lyrics that don't bring anything meaningful to the table.

I thought last year I had a pretty raw reaction to Suicide Silence's (still) awful self-titled album. But, believe it or not, I'd take that release any day of the week over "AMERICA". I'm honestly curious how much say the rest of the band members had on the content of the album versus Leto's ideas. This whole album just reeks of Leto's disillusioned sense of greatness. He tries, again and again, to make songs meaningful. But every time, the album fails with all sorts of lyrical cliches and a reliance on filler "oh"s rather than actual content. Electronics overtake genuine instrumentation, and the sense of trying to be inspirational overtakes the ability to actually be inspirational. This album was trying to be an encompassing of American culture. Instead, it is a painful microcosm of awful music that seems stuck in its own little world. I hate this album, more than I've hated any album in recent memory. It would be a feat for another release to beat this one for my worst album of the year. Also, this may be my least favorite album of the decade. Congrats to you, 30 Seconds to Mars!

Favorite Songs: "Great Wide Open" (I guess?)
Least Favorite Songs: "One Track Mind", "Love is Madness", "Live Like a Dream", "Dangerous Night", "Walk on Water", "Hail to the Victor", "Rescue Me", "Rider", "Dawn Will Rise", "Remedy", "Monolith" (Yes I listed the rest of the album. Fight me.)