As much as I love video games and music, I tend to go through periods of preferring one over the other for a year or two. My high school years mostly had me listening to all kinds of bands Pandora and my online friends recommended. After finding a nearly a hundred, only ten or so are bands I still frequently listen to as I play video games during my days at college. One of them is Thirty Seconds to Mars.They're not one of my all-time favorites, but I've enjoyed enough of their work to have the majority - if not the entirety - of their discography (along with Lacuna Coil, Bentley Jones, Breaking Benjamin, and HIM). I generally like Thirty Seconds to Mars' take on alternative rock with lots of melodies, a touch of harsh vocals, and occasional periods of building atmosphere to set a song's unique tone. Most of their songs tend to stand out to me because the band occasionally changes up the "format" of a song. They tend to follow the standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus pattern, but sometimes they throw in an instrumental break near the middle of a song that typically happens in the progressive rock genre. Throw in lyrics with tons of references to literature, religion, and mythology, some pretentious and philosophical music videos, and a tiny bit of self-awareness and that's Thirty Seconds to Mars. If more "ambitious" people who sing, act, direct, and be a celebrity who don't make huge holier-than-thou asses of themselves and their work like Jared Leto, I might be less of a skeptical person.
Or maybe Jared is an elitist asshole who hates his fans. Haven't seen or heard of any meltdowns yet on Twitter, so I'm staying optimistic.
