horrible noise
What do you get if you group together 5 very talented musicians, lock them in a room, turn their amps up to eleven (if they'll go that far), and ask each of them to play as many extreme, technical metal riffs as they possibly can within 3 minutes. The answer is Delenda from 'From a Second Story Window'.
Apart from the particularly rubbish band name, 'From a Second Story Window' play a thrashy style of emo mixed with lots of hardcore and lots of metalcore, which, reading between the lines, means the band play ten-to-the-dozen without a thought to structure, melody or an actual sense of song-writing.
You can probably guess that the press release tries to make this album sound like the most important metal album to ever come out, heralding it as diverse and eclectic. If the PR people and the band themselves are convinced this is the case then they're really in need of a reality check. Adding a token piano section, a bit of distorted cello or cleanly sung vocals does not count as being diverse, and they've obviously lived sheltered lives if they believe such claims. By this account, Opeth and Novembers Doom must be the most diverse bands in the world. What it actually means is the album sounds so much the same from start to finish that they needed something to break up the sonic monotony.
After several painful listens of Delenda, it is easy to recognise the awesome talent on offer. The guitar playing of Rob Hileman and Derek Vasconi in particular is technical, precise and very impressive. The constant battery of the ever-changing riffs is a testament to their excellent playing and creativity, however if you packed all of Metallica's riffs into a three-minute song then it, like all these tracks on offer, would sound an incoherent, un-listenable mess. Providing the spasmodic beat is Nick Huffman. Like the guitarists, he plays his drums like his life depended on it, lashing beat after double bass beat with un-nerving ease, but like with the ever-changing ideas each song is more like a three minute drum-fill. William Jackson squarks his way through each song providing nothing in the way of melody, intonation or attitude, except on the snore inducing 'Ghosts Over Japan'. Screaming is all well and good but it means nothing if bellowed over every note. Play the music without the vocals instead adding a pneumatic drill over the top would provide a similar effect.
It's such a shame that an obviously talented group of musicians have chosen to play this pretty pointless form of heavy metal. I'm sure they're capable of so much more. Evidence of this is contained in nuggets throughout the album; for example, the first 33 seconds of 'Soft Green Fields,' and at the 3:30 mark on 'Oracles and Doorsteps'. 'For those lost' is an acceptable interlude and perhaps could have been made a little more of instead of drawing out 'Ghosts Over Japan'.
Minute fractions of this album are pretty good, it's just a pity that they're almost lost amidst the riff lagoon and the banshee screaming. If their intended audience is aged between 14 and 20, tone deaf, unaware that melody exists and have an attention span of an easily distracted ant, then this album has got it nailed. To the rest of us it's just another messy, tuneless and incoherent extreme metal album masquerading as emo-metalcore. The packaging is pretty dandy though but this won't stop me from throwing it 'From a Second Story Window', or higher if I was in a block of flats.