This Damn Blog Aint Gonna Get Any Updates Anymore

Los Angeles, CA – September 11, 2009 – Following up on their incredibly successful sophomore release, A Beautiful Lie, multi-platinum rock band Thirty Seconds To Mars are hard at work on their highly anticipated upcoming record, “THIS IS WAR” (EMI’s Virgin Records) set to hit on November 24th. The album was produced by Flood (U2, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails), Steve Lillywhite (The Rolling Stones, U2) and Thirty Seconds To Mars. First single Kings and Queens at modern rock radio early next month. Fall tour dates will be announced in the coming weeks.

In an innovative and exciting move, Thirty Seconds to Mars’ upcoming release, This Is War, will have 2000 different album covers featuring individual photos of fans from around the world. Starting Friday, September 11th at 12pm PDT fans will be able to submit photos to be used for the covers by pointing their browser to www.thirtysecondstomars.com. The first 2000 photos to be uploaded that follow the proper specifications will become album covers. The campaign will run until 2000 usable covers have been uploaded to thefaceofmars@gmail.com

Thirty Seconds To Mars’ Jared Leto (vocals, guitar, songwriter), Shannon Leto (drums) and Tomo Miličević (guitar) teamed up with their fan community, The Echelon, earlier this year to record sounds for the upcoming record in a groundbreaking event they dubbed, “The Summit”. The band invited The Echelon members to travel to Los Angeles to take part in an impromptu recording session at Hollywood’s Avalon Club. It was so successful that since then Thirty Seconds to Mars decided to hold summits in 8 more countries across the world (Australia, Italy, Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, United Kingdom, Canada) in order to give their biggest supporters an opportunity to be a part of their new album.

With over 100 million views on YouTube, 40 million plays on MySpace and more than one million fans on iLike/Facebook, Thirty Seconds To Mars have always been quick to embrace digital culture and with the immense success they had with The Summit, decided to use that same digital technology to offer their fans a chance to get involved in the record making process through Twitter as well. The Digital Summit kicked off on Monday, August 10th and through the twitvid.com technology allowed fans to record sounds and vocals from their personal computers and mobile devices for inclusion on the album. The Digital Summit was a top 10 trending topic on Twitter during the two week promotion, garnering sixty thousand page views and 3000 unique sound recordings submitted from fans across the world.

Formed by brothers Jared and Shannon Leto, Thirty Seconds to Mars have won numerous awards and accolades, including an MTV Video Music Award, three MTV EMA’s, an MTV Latin and Asia Award, a Fuse Award, and three Kerrang! Awards. Thirty Seconds to Mars’ sophomore record, A Beautiful Lie hit platinum status after almost two years of heavy touring and winning fans over, one by one. The media caught on too, Alternative Press raved that the band "...just might be rock's best-kept secret. He [Jared Leto] sings with a range and ease that makes cathedrals jealous" while the Washington Post exclaimed, "hard-driving guitar riffs and powerful vocals carry this head banging outfit all the way to the rock-race finish line." The record spawned two Top 5 Modern Rock singles, From Yesterday and The Kill and the latter set a radio record for the longest-running hit in the history of Modern Rock radio play when it remained on the national airplay chart for more than 50 weeks following its & peak in 2006. From Yesterday was the band’s first < at the format and its epic video was the first American music video ever shot in the People's Republic of China. Thirty Seconds To Mars have over 500 live performances under their belts since the release of A Beautiful Lie, including major festival shows like Lollapalooza in the United States, Holland’s Pinkpop Festival and Japan’s Summer Sonic, which has earned them a growing, loyal, global fan base.