Review Summary: It's not At The Gates, it's not Botch, it's From A Second Story Window!
From A Second Story Window has been a pretty interesting band since their inception, somewhat death metal, somewhat ambient, somewhat metalcore, and all around amazing. Brilliant live performers, interesting songwriters, potheads, and party-goers, FASSW are the type of dudes who will get off stage and just chill with the fans for a little after a set.
Delenda opens with an intro of soft chimes leading into a haunting piano melody to build into something... completely out there.
Soft Green Fields starts out as everything that's wrong with but entertaining about "grind" influenced deathcore, lots of dissonant guitarwork and slowdown breakdowns, but transitioning into soothing atmospheric portions to tech-metal portions ridden with INTERESTING chugs and sweeps. You honestly can't follow where a song's gonna go, but that's kind of what makes the album so good. You never know if it's going to be annoying, intense, or beautiful, and NO AT THE GATES WORSHIP. The drumming on is incredibly tight, the drummer's more of a, "hmm what would fit well here," type guy, as apposed to a, "LOOK HOW FAST I CAN MOVE MY FEET," type of drummer you'll find in most modern metal acts. Vocally, the album is bizarre... very unique sounding mid-high rasps, some shrieks here and there, guttural growls, some unique sounding brees, and WHAT? Clean singing that sounds like Linkin Park?
Some of the most aurally appealing guitar parts I've heard in a while are in Dark Waters Of Thought and These Lights Above Us. And as a testament to improvement, the band's managed to incorporate a clean chorus here and there and even a ballad, without sounding like a metalcore Duran Duran as Killswitch Engage has become.
The only negative point to the album is that, after a few listens, you start to notice that even though they keep the song structures varied, FASSW hasn't come up with much new since their EP other than clean choruses. Luckily the album manages to be extremely catchy and still sticks to the bands unique style.
If you liked Not One Word Has Been Omitted, you should definitely check this album out, it's freaking fantastic.
