Room With A View
First Year Departure

In the beginning, there were the Black Thorns Lodge, a gloomy doom metal band with a rough and burning sound, heavily indebted to the early Katatonia; then suddenly the turning point, a sudden change of direction as astonishing as it was unpredictable.
Alessandro Mita and Francesco Grasso, co-founders of the group, decided to condense into a single musical proposal their declared love for French chansonniers, the artistic avant-garde of the early 1900s, the airy melancholy of the 80s new wave, the angry decadence of vintage death/doom metal, the festive genuineness and atavistic breath of Eastern European folk, with results unimaginable for a debut work. Indeed, from such a vast and multiform background, one would expect nothing more than a colossal flop, a sound magma with not the slightest internal continuity, a turbulent mixture of irreconcilable sounds destined to leave no trace in the listener... yet the result denotes an unusual maturity and a mastery of their expressive means that fear very few rivals among Italian rock/metal bands.

Room With A View is that ineffable melancholy that pervades us when we find in the attic an old, dusty black-and-white photo, and we linger for hours contemplating it, striving to associate each of those celluloid faces, which stare at us with lifeless and distant expressions, with a past, a story, a life in a time as far from our sensitivity as it is close chronologically. An era of unrepeatable contradictions, divided between flourishing social development and a sense of impending tragedy; tumultuous cultural ferment and totalitarian oppression; rampant individualism and mass conformity; naive faith in progress and rampant irrationalism.
First Year Departure puts into music both the disorientation and crisis of certainties that underlie emblematic works such as "The Magic Mountain" or "The Trial", as well as the joyous community atmosphere of popular festivals: portents of death and, at the same time, hymns to life.

The tortuous journey through the 1900s begins with the languid "Departures", a melancholic ballad cradled by soft breezes of synth, a sort of Nostalgiaplatz (for those who know Novembre) filtered through new wave sensitivity. The second stage, "Single Handed", is a whirl of dreamy and dissonant arpeggios, torrential Katatonia-style riffs, and beautiful acoustic inserts, framed by a gloomy and subdued trumpet. "Club Epoque" begins with a twilight lullaby that seems to echo French singer/songwriters of the early century, cathartically explodes into a wonderful "electric" chorus, in which Francesco Grassi's crystalline voice shines at its best, and finally settles on a soft carpet of acoustic guitars, interspersed with shadowy trumpet wails. It is the moment of the nostalgic end of the season, a somewhat anomalous episode in the context of the album, as it is a song already present in the Black Thorns Lodge demo rearranged for the occasion. The piece suffers from a way too obvious Katatonia influence, but it recovers thanks to an emotional text, an unusual taste in riffs, and a heartfelt final tribute to the great comedian Ettore Petrolini. Next is "Hero", a dreamy ballad with a vague indie aftertaste, featuring a central instrumental break that superbly combines noise and prog.
"Madeleine" is overall the only negligible piece of the lot, although enhanced by an intense chorus in Italian. "Budapest Song" undoubtedly qualifies as the most easy-listening song of all, given its alternation between driving and impetuous guitar riffs and caressing waves of synth-pop. And here we are, after the brief acoustic interlude of "l'Enfant Italie", at the masterpiece of the album: "Tiergarten". The crooked rhythms, the coarse and angular dissonances, the agonizing and frayed voice, ferry the listener into a world dotted with ruins and wrapped in a thick grayish patina, where a restless accordion improvises a spectral waltz over the ruins of civilization. However, the ending hints at a note of optimism: the gloomy and desolate atmospheres are swept away by flashes of acoustic brightness, symbolizing renewed hope for the future after so much senseless devastation.

And my hope is to have prompted you to listen to this masterpiece, which in the bleak Italian music scene shines like a pure gem. There is no better way to conclude this review than with the words of the group's leader:
"Welcome to the world of Room With A View, the theatre of the street, where clowns and puppets chase each other and where, between a waltz and a dream, you travel between Trieste, Stalingrad, and Thessaloniki. Listen to us if you want. Forgive us, if you can, for we are mere shadows, made of shards of dreams and stardust."