Leto strikes a chord stretching the truth 'A Beautiful Lie'  
By: Check Campbell
September 09, 2005
KnoxNews
Credit: Aitana

 30 Seconds To Mars (Virgin) Rating: (three stars)

As if actors don't have enough credibility problems when they delve into rock music, Jared Leto puts himself in the role of a troubled soul, presenting his band 30 Seconds To Mars as a brooding alt-rock act akin to Filter or Deftones on "A Beautiful Lie."

The tormented rocker is hard to buy even when his backstory is enigmatic, but Leto has had a public run of success going back more than a decade, when he was in the TV show "My So-Called Life," and continuing through parts in such films as "Alexander," "American Psycho," "Fight Club," "Panic Room" and "Requiem for a Dream."

We should all be so tortured.

Yet the 33-year-old actor has consistently played doomed characters, and rock stars generally play semi-fictional versions of themselves anyway, so reality is blurry here.

The young males who make up the key demographic of the fan-base for the band only need to know this: The 30 Seconds To Mars sound is legitimate, if formulaic, and Leto is more than serviceable as its mouthpiece, its guitarist and its songwriter.

Produced by Josh Abraham (Velvet Revolver, Linkin Park), "A Beautiful Lie" finds Leto working out his demons, dredging up ample pathos for the blustery rage of cuts such as "Savior" and the title track and even more effectively sinking into the melodic darkness of "Was It a Dream?" and "The Story."

It's been done before, in better and worse ways, and the songwriter has periodic problems with collapsing structure throughout "A Beautiful Lie." However, Leto's got a skillful hand, too, building "A Modern Myth" on a crescendo of goodbyes and working "The Fantasy" into an ambitious mini-rock opera.

Perhaps Leto's a phony and 30 Seconds To Mars is just a lie. At least it's sort of beautiful.