The Asylum's final show of the semester, Thanxxxgiving Throwdown, is a hardcore show top to bottom, something State College hasn't seen in a while.

"The last one I went to here was Every Time I Die at Crowbar in 2005," Asylum vice president and self-proclaimed metal aficionado Andy Pool said. "Ever since Crowbar closed, there's been a lack of a metal scene coming through."

Pool said there isn't a huge number of hardcore fans at Penn State compared to the size of the school, but there is definitely a presence. "It's a small but powerful community," he said. "Andrew [Visnovsky, Asylum president] gave me the task of putting together a hardcore show to try to revive the hardcore community at Penn State. There's a big hardcore scene in places like Altoona and Harrisburg, and we want to show Penn State can do it, too."

Just be careful about calling headliner From a Second Story Window a hardcore band.

"We're not trying to turn our backs on it," drummer Nick Huffman said. "We're just in a different place than we were a few years ago."

Bassist Joe Sudrovic said the material on From a Second Story Window's next album, due out next year, is more structured and mature with more singing hooks.

"When we play a certain type of music for so long, the next natural step is to write something we haven't been writing," he said.

Sudrovic said the band would probably play only a few of its new, unreleased songs, and that the songs the band does decide to play would "capture the old and new sound, a good segue into what From a Second Story Window is going to be."

Though respectful toward the environment in which the band was established, Huffman said his band had outgrown the metal scene and that he was more resentful toward the bands in the scene than he was toward the genre itself.

"It's turning into this stale conglomeration of bands all trying to do the exact same thing," Huffman said. "We're just trying to make music that can affect people emotionally. We're really trying to make something that will have a lasting impact, not just breakdown after breakdown after breakdown."

Huffman pointed to bands like Glassjaw and the Deftones as artists that were able to transcend an individual scene -- in their cases, hardcore and nu-metal, respectively -- to affect a larger group of people.

"The Deftones are a perfect example," he said. "They came up in the '90s in the middle of nu-metal, and then they started making much more melodic music. That made them more of a timeless band."

Visnovsky said that what he has heard of the band's current material is "really good."

"They combine the hardcore genre with some more melodic elements," he said. "It's astounding how they can go from a heavy driving breakdown into a really pretty part."

And regardless of genre or label, From a Second Story Window is, like most bands, looking to have a good time.

"We want to have a party," Sudrovic said. "We're going to be staying in State College that night, so let us know where the party is."