This, the opening show on the latest 30 Seconds To Mars UK tour, had been sold out for months so it didn't come as much of a surprise to find the queue outside the venue longer than the Lambton worms tail. What was unexpected was the length of time it took for the assembled throng to actually get inside. Pitching up just after 7pm it was well past 8pm by the time we were able to catch some of In Case Of Fires set. 

In the 20 minutes or so that I caught of the London based trio the first thing that struck home was the sound was terrible, too much bass and drums and whenever there were any triggered samples they swamped everything else. With such a handicap it was difficult to take anything from the four songs I heard tonight other than the fact that Colin Robinson is one hell of a drummer!  

After what seemed like an eternity 30 Second To Mars finally took the stage, there was a 55 minute breakdown without any real indication of why there was the need for such an extended delay,  as the strains of Orff's “Carmina Burana” built up along with the noise levels from the, by now expectant crowd and the band launched into a set that was centered around 2^nd album  “A Beautiful Lie” from opener “Battle Of One” through to encore “Fantasy”. 

In hindsight I have a bit of an un-reconciled problem with this gig. You see I enjoyed pretty much all of the time that Jared Leto and his band were onstage but I'm more than slightly annoyed by the fact that, if you total up the bands time onstage, and even being generous by including the three minute intro tape and at least the same again for the solo narrative that introduced Leto's first encore, then it came to just under 55 minutes and this seemed poor value for a headliner on a two band bill. Don't get me wrong, the performance was nigh on faultless, although arguably a little contrived at times. 30 Seconds To Mars really didn't put a foot wrong musically throughout and the light show was perhaps the best there's been in the Academy. It's just that, given the fact that the band have two albums under their belt the most recent of those is over two years old,  I expected there to be more variation in the set and perhaps it might even have been nice to have been gifted a new song or two to make the occasion more special.  

Sadly this was not to be and what we got instead was a very slick rendition of the majority of “A Beautiful Lie” which, in all fairness, was lapped up by the capacity crowd almost without exception. So an enjoyable but unsatisfying gig if truth be told.

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