Jared Leto says Thirty Seconds To Mars have written 200 new songs, and will be releasing new music "momentarily"

Jared Leto
(Image credit: Roberto Panucci - Corbis/Getty Images)

Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto has described the global lockdown which was initiated to combat the transmission of COVID-19 as a "blessing" for his band, and says that the Los Angeles based group wrote some 200 songs while the world at large was on pause.

Speaking with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, the musician/actor, who is set to star as Marvel anti-hero Morbius in the upcoming film of the same name, suggested that he and his bandmate, and brother, Shannon have emerged from the darkest days of the pandemic with "two albums, maybe three, worth of material".

"As challenging as that time was for so many people around the world and devastating for so many, there was also a flipside to it," Leto tells Lowe. "And for both my brother and I, I think it was like the universe doing for us what we can't do for ourselves sort of thing, where really, it was the first time we were in one place for that long since we were little kids. And even as little kids, we moved around as, you know. We had the kind of vagabond hippie life. And it was a blessing.

And I sat and I started writing. It took me a month or two to get into the swing of things. But wrote about 200 songs. And we have maybe two albums, maybe three, worth of material. And we're going to start putting it out momentarily. I mean, really momentarily. So really excited."

The most recent Thirty Seconds To Mars album, America, was released in April 2018.

The full interview with Jared Leto can be heard at this location.

Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.