30 Seconds to Mars is a rock band, most famous for catering to emos everywhere, having cool videos and Jared Leto as the front man. They are on tour right now.

Their support in Vienna was Danish electro rock band Carpark North.

I hadn’t heard (of) Carpark North before the show but they totally won me over with their show. I’ve been listening to them a lot since the show and I really, really like their music. And when I say that I mean that I’ve been listening to them pretty much non-stop for two weeks and I’m still totally addicted to More.

It is very rare that the supporting band eclipses the main act but Carpark North did just that. Their 30 minutes were more fun, more energetic and overall better than the complete show of 30 Seconds to Mars.

After Carpark North were done, a black curtain descended in front of the stage and that’s when deadra and me discovered that we were in a giant room filled with maniacs…

Seriously, we were totally worried that we would go to the concert and we would be the only blobs of colour in a sea of black emoness. And that we would be the oldest people there. And we thought that we were stupid to worry when we arrived there and there were all kinds of people and all colours were worn and everything was fine. And then the curtain descended and the audience started to scream.

Oh boy… and I tell you, we could have dealt with a crazy audience but the actual show… It all started with the infamous black curtain dropping and two or three guys standing behind it, brandishing white flags. [At this point, deadra said “well, it’s kinda cheesy and very planned but it kinda works.” I was already mortified.]

They performed the first song and it was kind of obvious that Jared Leto was high. Or at least, it totally seemed that way. Maybe the guy is like that. But I don’t believe it.

But the bad things still weren’t done. Because then the guys with the flags came back, but this time they had drums. [At this point, deadra, too, gave up all hope.]

The audience, of course, loved it. Or maybe they were screaming from horror, I’m not sure.

Then they started playing From Yesterday and actually showed their own video running in the background.

I mean, it’s an awesome video, but seriously? After that they showed quite a few of their own videos and it was just a little ridiculous.

After about 40 minutes, everyone disappeared from stage and we were left wondering if they were already going for the encore or what the hell that was supposed to mean. After two minutes or so, Shannon Leto turned up with a singing bowl and just played something for a couple of minutes. It was like a show in kindergarten. “Look, auntie, you see how good I am with that singing bowl? I can also play the tambourine a little bit.”

Then Shannon disappeared and Jared turned up for a bit, playing random songs on the acoustic guitar but never finishing a song. Instead he broke off in the middle of a verse once, with the words, “yeah, so that was a new song.”

Most of the time, Jared seemed to ignore the audience, but when he did interact, it went pretty well. Probably because most people were hysteric enough to cheer for a black curtain. Just once, he made the mistake of actually coming within touching distance of the people and he returned with one less shirt. No kidding. He was wearing two shirts going in. When he came back up, he was wearing one shirt and a collar.

Once when he came too close to rabid fangirls, somebody almost got trampled. He reacted perfectly, I have to say, interrupting the song, warning people and not resuming until the trampled person got back up again.

The whole concert ended with Kings and Queens and for that song, some people were allowed to go on stage. They had like 10 security guys making sure that they still were far from touching distance from Jared Leto [good call, I’d say] but that kind of made the whole exercise seem redundant. “I’m gonna party with my fans – as long as they don’t touch me!”

Anyway, maybe if the audience hadn’t been so ridiculously overzealous I would have enjoyed the cornyness of the show more. But the combination of it just killed me and I was just happy to be able to leave.

Since I was wishing that the evening had ended with Carpark North, I’ll at least end the review with them.