LOVE LUST FAITH+DREAMS is Thirty Seconds To Mars' fifth studio album. No two Thirty Seconds to Mars albums are the same and they are constantly pushing the edge of what they are capable as a band. LOVE LUST FAITH + DREAMS is no exception. True, they have front man Jared Leto’s powerful vocals and the themes of striking out in the name of the self as their backbone, but there is a hitherto unseen vulnerability in both the music and lyrics. Leto is notorious, fierce, and defiant, spitting in the face of expectation. Don’t misunderstand me, tenacity and boldness are still an integral part of the album, but we get a peak at the beast’s underbelly. This exposure is unsurprisingly most audible in the “dreams” section of the album, though we get some teasers earlier in “Up in the air.”
Instrumentally, LOVE LUST FAITH + DREAMS is complete chaos, hurdling from retro to electronic and back with no more than the most cursory transitions. This album is divided into four sections: Love, Lust, Faith, and Dreams. Each of these sections is very different, but still not fully coherent within each section. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about this format. On the one hand it definitively showcases the band’s varied talents and their ability to incorporate a diversity of both sound and style. On the other hand, the album really lacks an overall cohesion musically and melodically.
Lyrically, LOVE LUST FAITH + DREAMS is seamless, slipping between its four themes with a mixture of hope, wistfulness and ardent drive without so much as a hiccough. The hope and faith are the elements that really gave me pause. Time and again Thirty Seconds to Mars’ albums have contained themes of disillusionment and faith in the self over religious faith. While it’s still very much critiqued, we see talk of faith in something beyond the self in this album, which piqued my interest quite a bit.
Overall, I like the songs but I feel like the album itself is rough. It seems like Thirty Seconds To Mars is going through a style change and hasn’t quite settled yet. I look forward to more.
4/6
