KATHARSIS (E)

It seems to be that lots of Scandinavian bands conquer Europe with tasteful heavy metal. While their fellow-countrymen from Nightwish and Sinergy are more gothic and Stratovarius more progressive, the Finnish band Embraze plays progressive and melodic heavy metal, but their sound is particularly defined by the grunt-like vocals from guitar-player Lauri Tuohimaa, who's also the band's main composer. Their third album Katharsis opens with grunts, but in most of the tracks the lyrics are sung, however with a very deep throat and a forced voice. Sometimes Tuohimaa even sings 'normally' and then he shows that he's got a very pleasant, but not a distinctive voice. That's probably why he has chosen the hard rocking kind of singing as Embraze's trademark. Most lyrics are gloomy and deal with things like death, fear and 'no way out'. Some of the songs are played in the vein of Metallica, like Fear, Filthy Angels and Calm And Distant, others like Closed could have been performed by Within Temptation. The instrumental ballad Kiiminijoki is a tribute to Rainbow and the album's finale called Sinmaker is a raw and heavy up-tempo track in which Tuohimaa's voice is accompanied by the sweet voice of female singer Jonna Drushinin. On the one hand I can say this that Katharsis is primarily a heavy metal album, characterized by 'fearful' male vocal performances, but on the other hand it's also melodic and progressive because of the nice keyboards - both orchestrations and, amongst others, organ - played by Heidi Määttä. The variety between the songs, but also within songs like My Star, Beautiful Death and the fine heavy ballad The Sun Loves The Moon grabs your attention throughout the album. With a different kind of singer they might have been sounding less original, but perhaps more to my taste.