New Find: Shear

I found this band via a comment left by John of Sugar and Spikes Music (Facebook here and MySpace here) and because they are a female fronted Finnish act, I had to give them a try.  Shear is a six-piece ensemble hailing from Helsinki and to date their only release has been a demo entitled "In Solitude."  According to their site, they are in the process of recording a full-length album.

The demo contains four tracks of what sound to my ear, at least, like power metal-Gothic metal crossover.  Vocalist Alexa Leroux has a ballsy voice with a lot of edge and the songs are heavy and melodic with lots of strong guitar and keyboard work.  The first two I listened to, "In Solitude" and "Mistakes" were all right, but the next two, "Scorched" and "Trapped in a Shell" were much better and perhaps foreshadow best what might come from this young band. 

Shear is:

Alexa Laroux - Vocals
Mikael Grönroos - Guitars
Eerik Purdon - Bass
Lari Sorvo - Keys
Lauri Koskenniemi - Guitars
Juhana Karlsson - Drums

Official Site
MySpace
Last.fm (where there are free downloads of the four songs from the demo)
Facebook

Here are some samples.  These are the two songs I thought were the stronger of the four.