Ooops, did Gothenburg move to Japan recently and I didn’t even notice?! Listening to the Osaka based fivepiece SHADOW you could easily come to this conclusion. The band plays a perfect blueprint of what’s been going on in Scandinavia throughout the last couple of years, with a focus on the melodic Death Metal movement in general and bands like old DARK TRANQUILLITY, IN FLAMES, CHILDREN OF BODOM in particular. Great melodies, lots of power and excellent musicianship make the band’s selftitled debut an essential purchase for every genre lover. But the biggest surprise is yet to come: SHADOW is fronted by a female vocalist! And she’s doing such a great job that you won’t even recognize the difference. This is by no means a cheap DORO, SINERGY or whatever melodic type singing – real aggression is the game and Tokiko Shimamoto has impressively done her homework, that’s for sure! She can easily compete with all the males, that are constantly screaming their lungs out. Incredible! Nine own compositions made it onto this debut, perfectly produced (with a final mix courtesy of Finnvox Studio in Finland) and they are all of equally strong quality, so if you’re favorite bands include some of the above mentioned names, you gotta check this out!