Thirty Seconds To Mars, the musical side project of Academy Award-winning actor Jared Leto and his older brother Shannon, embarked on the UK leg of their near 80 date Seasons Tour and stopped at London’s O2 Arena. In the week where one of the biggest tours by one of the biggest artists of all time touches down in the British Isles, there appears to be a chasm opening between the very top pop stars of the time where demand appears to be infinite and stadiums can be sold out over a year in advance, and established acts that are trying to make up for lost time coupled with promoters and ticket agents who are trying to make up for lost revenue – both due to the pandemic. That has led to multiple occasions in the last 18 months or so whereby legacy acts are promoted to bigger venues with huge ticket price increases putting the onus on fans who, through an ongoing cost of living crisis are unfortunately voting with their feet. The Black Keys in the last couple of weeks have had to cancel their US Arena tour and rescheduled to smaller theatres due to a lack of demand in sales.
Thirty Seconds To Mars @ The O2
“We want to bring people from the back to the front” shouts Leto during the open songs of tonight’s set. The more expensive golden circle standing area is barely over half full, leaving a massive gap in the middle of the floor, which looked very strange. The die hard fans at the back of the arena that didn’t want to, or were unable to, pay the premium to be a few metres closer to the band felt further cut away from the concert. Additionally with the top tier of the arena completely closed and unsold, meant that it was great if you wanted to go to the bar with very little (if any) queuing or needed to use the facilities, but led to a slightly strange, underwhelming atmosphere at times.
Nevertheless, the band entered the arena by walking down the steps, in the stand to the right of the stage. Jared Leto, dressed in an oversized cream blazer, wraparound sunglasses and pink gloves while his brother, Shannon Leto, donned the bands own merch. It was like they were electioneering whist the soundtrack was, one of their own songs, Closer To The Edge being played through the PA system. They were in no rush either, taking pretty much the four and a half minutes of the song to get themselves to the stage.
Kicking off the set with Up In The Air, demanding the crowd engage with the “whoa’s” of the intro, which they duly obliged. Keeping the energy high, the band go straight into one of their biggest tracks, Kings And Queens, a throwback to when they were at their most creative and commercially successful.
Community is definitely what Jared was after, referencing how lucky he and the band were to be here. Reiterating that desire to put the fans first and at the heart of the performance, on just the fourth song, Rescue Me, the singer invites a number of fans onto the stage to act as backing dancers and interact with him, further demonstrating his ability to charm and beguile the crowd. Unbeknownst to him, one of those fans happens to be one half of X Factor pop-duo Jedward!
Once the fans returned to the floor, it reinforced how big the stage seemed to the band. With Shannon’s drums static to the left of the stage, Jared occupying the centre ground and utilising the catwalk, guitarist, keyboardist and backing vocalist Steve Aiello was relegated to right of the back of the stage, almost out of sight. He had moments during solos where he would advance into view but for the majority of the gig he was relegated to the back. Aiello, who has worked with bands such as Black Veil Brides, I Prevail, and Sleeping With Sirens amongst others first worked with Thirty back in 2013 and has writing credits on their fifth record America.
One thing I notice is that you can hear a slight lisp when Leto talks to the crowd and it takes me a few songs to realise but that the 52-year-old singer has a silver grill across both upper and lower sets of teeth. His appearance as extravagant as the show he’s trying to put on almost singlehandedly. Not a concert for those of a nervous disposition, there were confetti cannons, flames, fireworks, Jared even had a flamethrower at one point during the fierce battlecry of This Is War.
Leto continues to charm in an acoustic section, he starts tuning and noodling an introduction to Alibi when he spots a fan to his left holding a sign that says “Play Song Roulette.” His attention is drawn and he receives the sign via a security guard and proceeds over the next 5 minutes to go through the fan’s 3 suggestions, unveiling each song title to the crowd, before performing a sporadic and slightly play-by-numbers chorus or verse of each of: Never Not Love You, Great Wide Open and 2013’s End Of All Days, where he openly forgot the lyrics. His charm able to disarm the room and pull you further under his spell.
Things get back on track with From Yesterday which completes the acoustic segment of the show and the band segue into their 2014 cover of Rihanna and Mikky Ekko’s Stay. Picking up the energy with Night Of The Hunter and 2005’s A Beautiful Lie, which finds Jared once again disappearing into the crowd, this time across the sparsely populated floor section into the stands, and is a couple of metres away for me as he sings one of the choruses of the song. The singer once again appeals to fans on the side to seek out arena staff who would be able to provide them with a wristband to join them down at the front of the stage – a proposition, it seemed that was not taken up by many but served as another reminder (not that we needed it) of the disappointing attendance tonight.
There’s a pause. The lights are down and there’s whisperings around me, where the band are going to pop up this time is guessed at. People in front of me are pointing towards a platform in the roof, thinking Jared is on his way up to perform some death defying stunt, like when he climbed the Empire State Building to promote this very tour. Unfortunately, it was just a costume change where the frontman added a cape to his ensemble.
Shannon, 21 months older than his actor sibling steps up to the front to play the pulsating beat to Stuck on a drum machine in the middle of the catwalk before another early career highlight, The Kill (Bury Me) which sends the adoring crowd wild, channeling their youth and screaming the emotive chorus “Come break me down, bury me, bury me, I am finished with you.”
They end on Closer To The Edge providing a symmetry to a chaotic night being the opening walk on music from an hour and 45 minutes earlier. There’s no doubt that the UK leg of this tour hasn’t been as popular as either the band (or perhaps their promoters) would have wanted, and whilst their newer material didn’t land as well as their older heavier and more traditionally structured songs, I was left with respect for Jared and his musical project. His desire to throw everything into a performance and put the fans at the heart of the performance whilst not taking himself too seriously further seduces you to him. His P.T. Barnum act was admirable, it’s a shame that nobody seemed to know that the circus was in town.
Live review of Thirty Seconds To Mars at The O2 Arena, London by Chris Lambert on 4th June 2024. Photography by Kalpesh Patel.
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