For now, I have something for Tomo’s fans, but not only, I think. Due to the forthcoming release of “This is War” a Polish rock magazine – “Teraz Rock” – interviewed Tomo about the album and some other things, and I took the liberty to translate and post it here.
I’d like to excuse myself in the beginning – I tried to be as accurate, precise and clear as I could, but I’m merely at B2 level in CEFR, so it might have not worked. Forgive me for the mistakes of any kind, especially the lack of articles (I always forget about them) and wrong tenses. If you notice any mistake or if some phrases are not clear – let me know by PM, I’d be more than happy to correct them so the translation is as good as it can get.
Also, I couldn’t provide you with the scans as my machine broke, but I took some photos, so you can check the graphic content of the article.
The Inside War
Whether it is to be credited to the ultra-hit album “A Beautiful Lie” or the shocking performance of Jared Leto in the “Requiem for a Dream,” 30 Seconds to Mars is one of the most popular bands in the emo-era [some Polish still can’t get over it
]. Tomo Milicevic, bassist of the band, talks about the album “This Is War” in his first interview for Polish press ever.Part one: about moving forward, communication and 30 million dollars
Who is the one that you declare war on?
We’re not declaring any war – period.
So what does the “This Is War” mean?
The war in the album title has little to do with the actual meaning of the word “war.” To be precise – it has nothing to do with it. This title means... (silence) It means that you have to always move forward and never give up. We repeat those words to ourselves all the time, before any task we take on ourselves – whether it is a live performance or the recording of a new song. We look at ourselves and say: This is war, we’re going to war. We have to die for what we do, what we believe in. That’s all we have, there’s no B-plan. That’s the reason why everything we do, we do like we were going to war. But it is also about the mental warfare, struggle to stay faithful to oneself and it concernes everyone: you, me, Jared – everyone.
We found out about the title when the conflict with EMI arose. I though it was connected in some way.
Oh, no, no. The title have been existing long before this conflict started.
On the Internet one can find some detailed informations about the nature of the conflict – you wanted to leave the record company, and they filed the petition for compensation. Could you tell us your version of the story [how you perceived it]?
On our part, we decided that we have the right to fight for some certain things. We were talking about it as the band members and we decided that we want changes. But at that time the company didn’t really want to negotiate. The rest stays at the past. But I have to tell you that the whole petition is now irrelevant. What is important is the fact that we found a solution and we can work together again. Because all that we really wanted to achieve was the communication. And we got it.
You were sued for 30 million dolars – it must have been stressful...
It was horrifying, I admit. But you know, it wouldn’t stop us. Such situations teach you how to fight, they toughen you and give you the will to survive. Undoubtfully, it haven’t weaked us. We always knew that we’re going in the right direction and the new album is the best proof of the fact.
Do you think that the petition influenced the lyrics on the album?
Not directly. But in a situation when you record a new album, everything that happens in your life influences you and your work. The mood you wake up with, first notes you hear, first vision you see – it all has its impact on your actions throughout the day. So of course: this petition was a part of our lives when we were making this album, but we didn’t suddenly decide to write a song about it.
So tell me, what’s the attitude [mood, atmosphere?] of the record for you? Which emotions it evokes?
For me personally is’t a joy, the celebration mood, something positive. It has the uplifting vibration, the thing that was missing on our previous albums. I think that it’s an effect of the fact that we were travelling all around the world, we were meeting fantastic people and we were doing what we love to do. I don't think that one can get a better gift from their life. And when we have came back from the tour and entered the studio, we were filled with those emotions – and it had its impact on the music.
Part two: about the music geeks, the gray hairs and Brandon Flowers
I think that in a musical sense this album is very progressive in comparison with the previous ones. Do you agree?
Oh, yes. It’s progressive in a different way, but progressive, I can agree. In some way we reverted to our roots, to being the music geeks* (laugh) [*well, there is a word “kujon” used, which in my dictionary is translated to a “swot, grind” and in Polish the word “kujon” means someone who studies a lot and by the classmates is perceived as a weird, badly socialized person, so I think you can translate “kujon” to “geek”]
Was the four years long work an indispensable part of making the new album? Nowadays three years long break between the albums is a standard.
Well, definitely we’re not a band that fits into the modern standards (laugh). You know, it wasn’t like we were working on the album for those four years. It was more like a year and a half, maybe two years, and to tell the truth, it simply takes so much time. Of course, I know some bands that can do it in a month. I don’t want to criticise them, but such records usually aren’t good, at least that’s what I think. To create a complete, full album, you have to write a lot of material and choose only the best out of it.
It is said that the band leader, Jared Leto, wasn’t sleeping at nights, writing the new songs.
Believe me, we all were pulling the all-nighters (laugh). And we all got a few more gray hairs because of that album [from what I noticed, Jared has suffered the most gray hairs
].And they say that your idea for the album was to catch the energy of a bunch of guys playing together the life performances. Is that true? “This Is War” doesn’t sound like it was improvised (I couldn't really find the word, I'm not that good in English, but what the interviewer meant, as Morrigu says, is that the album doesn't sound like any of the songs had been recorded by the whole band together, without improving it and so on. Hope you can understand.)
That’s both true and false. We weren’t recording it that way. The only exception is the song “Alibi” – if you listen to it carefully, you will feel it for sure. That’s just us, stanging together in one room, playing live, maybe with a few addings. But as far as the album is concerned, we wanted to catch the energy of our performances.
What did you do to achieve that?
I think that it worked because we were recording it in a diffrent way. We weren’t trying to make it all perfect. When we record an album, we treat it as a studio project, and when we play the same songs live, we’re making a singing performance out of them. But now we let the sound to be more organic and harsh, though still it’s a major, epic production. We weren’t interested in a simple, quiet and small thing, we wanted something powerful.
I didn’t notice too many of the potential singles on the album. Do you think there are some real hits on it?
We are not concerned about such things at all. It’s the company who decides which song to promote the album with – we’re just recording an album, which we would love. Singles and all that business crap... when you are in the studio, you’re creative and honest with yourself, you’re not even able to think about it. If you would, you would shut yourself and in the process of creating the most important thing is to be as opened and as creative as possible.
I think that the album is simply more difficult in the reception than the ones you’ve made before.
I can agree, but I think there are some hits on it. It’s not for me to judge, but here in the US the single is the “Kings and Queens” and it does really well. When you listen to U2’s songs you realize not many of them are truely the hits, but as a whole they are so amazing that they drag your attention. We were trying to achieve the same thing.
Didn’t you go too far with it? You were working with Flood and Steve Lillywhite, the producers known for cooperation with U2 and at some point you sound similarly.
We’re all fans of U2, that’s one of our favourite bands, so you can hear their influence on us on the records. And when you add the Flood and Steve, guys that have their own instruments and techniques, those influences are even more visible – undoubtfully the style is the same. But don’t think that we said to ourselves: let’s record an U2’s album (laugh).
In the “Hurricane” we can hear the pop star [?!], Kanye West. Where did you get the idea of the cooperation?
It’s true that we recorded the song together, but his contribution wasn’t too big. I don’t want to diminish his credit, but the song was arleady done when he showed up. Jared met him when he was at Europe and invited him to the studio, so he could check our new songs. Kanye really came to us, heared the “Hurricane” and liked it, so he sang one verse. But that was it, he didn’t create anything new, the song was made only by Jared.
And what’s the story with Brandon Flowers from The Killers, who was supposed to help you as well?
No, no, no, that’s just a misunderstanding. On Hawaii, where Kanye had been recording with Jared, guys met Brandon and someone took a photo of all three of them together. But nothing else happened, just fans spread the rumor. Of course, it would be great if Brandon played for us on piano for example, but it didn’t happen. But we’d be happy to invite him for the next record, Brandon’s cool!
Part three: about throwing songs to the bin, quarrels and viewers perspective.
In one of the interviews Jared described himself as a “control freak”. Is he so, really?
A bit, yes. The guy is in fact an alien. He’s so creative, so smart that you’d think that he's from another planet. Sometimes I wonder how someone like him can exist in our society (laugh). And he is a control freak, but that’s a good thing – someone in the band has to. Someone has to have the last word and take the tough decisions. There has to be someone who’s able to look you in the eye and say: That’s a wrong answer, try again. Someone has to have balls to start all over again. And Jared is such person. He can write a song, record it and throw it to the bin next day, because he thinks it’s not good enough.
Jared’s brother – Shannon – is the drummer of the band. Is it hard to play in a band with two brothers? Considering the case of the Oasis one may think it’s potentially dangerous...
They are brothers that don’t fight too much. Is it hard to live with them? No, not at all. You see, we’re lucky to know exactly what we want, and we all want the same. We want to be honest with ourselves, to be creative. And we want to know that when we’ll record an album and hear it for the first time, we’ll be sure that we did everything we could for it to be the best. Of course we sometimes quarrel – just like all boys do (laugh). But we have to set some challenges for ourselves and compete with each other if we want to move forward.
How does Jared balance being an actor and a musician? Doesn’t one thing blot out the other sometimes?
I think that the answer for this question is visible everyday. When was the last time that you saw Jared playing in a movie? (Recently a new movie where Jared plays, “Mr. Nobody” by Jaco van Dormael, came out – note from the interviewer) Jared loves acting and he loves music, but for him these are two separate things. Besides, I know that music is for him something totally special, because it’s personal. As an actor he pretends to be someone else, he says lines that someone else wrote, plays someone’s vision. I know he loves it, but music is his own thing. He creates it and expresses in it what he wants to. At least I would feel that way if I were him.
Before 30 Seconds to Mars debuted, Jared has had a strong position as an actor. Before your second, critical album he was a major movie star. Don’t you think it could affect the great success of your band?
I think the opposite. Of course, from the viewers perspective such a conclusion can be easily drawn, bus as a band member I can tell you that because of the fact that Jared is an actor people don’t treat us seriously. I believe that if 30 Seconds to Mars set up earlier, before Jared started acting, by now we would be the major* band in the world [*like the most major of the majorest bands XD. He says “the biggest” actually, but not in a sense that they would have so many members, but they would be so popular that they’d be known all over the world].
In the same magazine is a review of the album “This Is War”, it was actually considered as the “Album of the month” (got 4 stars out of 5), so the most important release on December
. But the review is so dumb that I had no strenght to translate it carefully so my translation i equally dumb as the review itself.It took the band 30 Seconds to Mars four years to release this album. In the meantime, they[the band] decided that their contract with the record company had expired and so they wanted to leave the EMI, which responded by filling a petition for 30 million dollars. Well, no-one, especially the major record company, would let the cash cow run away just like that. There was over one million copies of the previous album sold in US itself, and the worldwide circulation extended three and a half million dollars. The sides of the argument reached an agreement without a lawsuit.
Will the born in pain “This Is War” be as successful as the previous album? Considering the hype that shrouds the band, we can assume so. But all of the fans must be warned:it’s a diffrent 30 Seconds to Mars now. Though the musicians still emphasize their emo-roots (WTF?!), now they decided to serach for an inspiration in the ’80s.
You can hear that basically form the very beginning. The introduction, “Escape” with the “African” drums and a choir brings the association with Peter Gabriel in his 4th album. Same thing’s with the “Night of the Hunter”, but here you can hear an obvious facination with U2 – especially Jared Leto’s singing sounds like a screamo version of young Bono (double WTF?). And when we reach the single “Kings and Queens” it’s hard to resist the feeling that the musicians dreamt about their own version of “The Joshua Tree” album – but with a metal kick. Sometimes not only Jared, but the whole band, sounds like U2 with “edgy” sound of the guitar and a characteristic rythimc section.
On “This Is War” you can find more references to the Irish firends – in the inspired way of singing and vocal techniques, full of air and “big” sound (like in “Alibi”). And in a song with a characteristic title “Closer to the Edge” even the piano part sounds like from “New Year’s Day”... But let’s be fair – we’re talking about small additions and evident fascination of the musicians. Beacuse 30 Seconds to Mars are still the autonomic band – with their own attitude to the melody, with the ambitions expanding just copying the well known firends. The band that got bored with the populatiry and found their strenght in experimenting with sounds and complex, progressive compositions.
Of course there are strong choruses in the spirit of screamo (triple WTF?!?!?!) – like in “Night of the Hunter,” “This Is War” or “Search and Destroy.” But those, just like most of the songs are mainly extended structures, changes in dynamics and moods and a really long songs (approximately 6 minutes long). The band also experiments with the sounds, and the big contribution here has the Summit: over 1 thousand people, fans, that sing, clap and stamp, and can be heard in different places, especially in “Vox Populi”. This gives the album the real freshness. Just like the ideas like synths in “Stranger in a Strange Land”, acoustic sound in “100 Suns” and instrumental “L490”.
Massive, ambitious and different – those three words describe “This Is War” the best. More difficult, you could add. One exception – “Hurricane”. Recorded with participation of vocalist Kanye West the song sounds like One Republic's “Apologize” but without the hit-perfection. But we forgive – “This Is War” is an impressive enterprise.
First two pages of the interview
The advertising of TIW
The review
Hope you enjoy it all!
thank you my friend
