Finland's back in the house, with the new release of Shear, offering a decent bunch of progressive (power) metal fronted by a charming lady.
Katharsis, the Fins newborn, is far from an easy listener. However, when focussing on the music, the musical quality of this record is fairly undeniable. First and foremost, it's the vocals that are quite surprising and honestly, quite the opposite from what you'd expect. No opera or classical voice, but a rough rock voice. Katharsis is an incredibly varied album, showing some fine groovy parts and a good combination of symphonic and power metal. It doesn't sound really incredibly refreshing, but fans of Lullacry and Lacuna Coil will most certainly fall in love with Shear.
The biggest quality of Katharsis is most definitely its experimental character with a good sauce of progressive melodic metal. There still are some improvements that need to be made, but if the band is aware of this, Shear's future is looking very bright.