From A Second Story Window "Delenda" (Black Market Activities/Metal Blade)
By Taylor Green
Monday. Sep 18, 12:28 PM
Maelstorm of insanity.

From A Second Story Window are one of those bands that likes to do things you'd never expect. And I'm not talking in the Opeth sense of multi-layered song structures or Between The Buried And Me’s psych-metal "everything but the kitchen sink" approach. Actually, in a way, Delenda is a little bit of both, but comparable to none.

Delenda begins with an incredible intro, dissimilar from what most extreme bands would utilize. With soft bells and a whisking piano like wind chimes being rattled from the first brushes of a hurricane, "Acknowledgement" serves as the precursor to Delenda's front line assault on the synapses. Two minutes into it, the mood begins to change for the worst, and by the time track two hits, the winds are about to knock your bloody house off its foundation.

"Soft Green Fields," the second track, explodes with the speed of grindcore, the precision of math metal, and the fury of death metal. Never staying on a given beat for more than 20 seconds, Delenda is a tough album to digest at first, but like mathcore kings The Dillinger Escape Plan, once everything is consumed in proper fashion, From A Second Story Window destroy like nothing else.

Coming from a region with no direct musical influences, From A Second Story Window manage to devastate beyond typical genre restraints. More impressively, the mish-mash attitude of this 10-song descent rarely sounds repetitive or jumbled. You can pick breakdowns from "A Piece of History Written in English" apart from parts of "Oracles and Doorsteps" quickly. The eclectic devastation is akin to Between The Buried And Me's earlier work, but diagnosed with ADHD and amped up on meth and acid.

Clearly, this style of metal is becoming a growing acquired taste. As stated earlier, Delenda is massively hard to digest as it truly does throw the entire refrigerator into the oven. The piano-driven "Ghosts Over Japan" really doesn't seem to fit the album and is my only complaint about the structure of the album. Beyond that, Delenda should definitely come with a warning sticker. This album isn't easily accessible in the slightest, and fans of big riff metal will definitely be turned off by From A Second Story Window's miniscule musical attention span. Fans of the band’s first album will be pleased to see some progression and maturity, and mathcore kids will be spinning this until the next TDEP record. All in all, Delenda is a huge achievement within this very niche subgenre which continues to improve and impress every new album and band.
www.fromasecondstorywindow.com
www.blackmarketactivities.com
www.metalblade.com

Listen to a song from this album in our Radio section!

Taylor Green

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