An Evening with Jared

Right now I just feel.. restless. In fact, I’ve had this feeling for a few days now. There is nothing unclear about the reason to this. Yesterday, I saw 30 Seconds to Mars live at Helsinki Ice Hall. There were two warm-up acts, Killer Aspect and Sara. I couldn’t concentrate much on the gigs but they sounded good.

There was quite a lot of waiting after the warm-up bands finished their sets. Finally, the ice hall went totally dark – the audience SCREAMED! The dramatic sound of O Fortuna filled the air.. and soon the gig started with A Beautiful Lie, continued with Battle of One and From Yesterday. There they were: Tomo Miličević on guitar, Shannon Leto on drums, tour bassist Tim Kelleher on bass... and Jared with a paste hairdo and some war paint on his face.. They were really there. They were too far, though. I used binoculars during the entire show to see what was happening on stage.

The songs.. They sounded so, so, very good! It was probably the best and most pleasant mix I’d ever heard. The music wasn’t too loud, it even could’ve been louder. It was good the way it was, though, because the audience screamed so loud that it made everyone’s ears ring.

What a thrill it was to hear Jared say “Minä rakastan teitä”! He praised our country quite a bit and put on a nice apron with the Finnish flag that was passed to him from the audience. That apron made him look like a baker.. The Finnish audience sang along to many songs – not very loud, though. Still, they surely knew how to scream their guts out after and during every song of the set.

The set consisted mostly of songs from the latest album. All songs from A Beautiful Lie except for The Story were heard. It was great - Savior and R-evolve were received with huge enthusiasm. I was also happy about Was It a Dream because it’s such a beautiful tune. The Kill drove the audience wild. Jared stirred the hype a bit by walking on the safety barrier and in the end running around the floor, chased by a few fans.

Then, Jared threw in a couple of acoustic songs. Capricorn (A Brand New Name) was awesome, but A Modern Myth was the song that gave me real chills. With Jared singing “goodbye, goodbye, goodbye” and the whole ice hall filled with his emotion-filled and melancholic, almost desperate vocals.. It was all so beautiful. It didn’t look too bad either when a few thousand cell phones illuminated the darkness.

At the end of the show, Jared picked up a young male 30STM fan named Lassi from the audience to help him prepare Finns for the last song that would be The Fantasy. The result was somewhat hilarious, definitely the funnest part of the show. It included some unsuccessful communication and cool lyric translations performed by Lassi.

This was 30STM’s last full-length gig of A Beautiful Lie era. The show ended with lots of red and black confetti, which was nice. I would’ve wanted to get autographs from the band but it wasn’t possible. It kind of left me very disappointed but I also realized that I just might get that chance if I go to their next show in Finland (or somewhere else) – and reserve tickets FAST.

They really are going to start working on a new album very, very soon. I wonder what it’s going to be like.. They’ve already made two albums that represent totally different music genres, and the third probably isn’t going to be similar to their previous work. Can’t wait to hear new stuff.. and see the videos!

Video clips from the show on YouTube