Band:	Ureas
Album:	The Naked Truth
Style:	Power metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	2006

01. Intoxicated
02. Bang Bang
03. In My Life
04. Colour Us Blind
05. Survived
06. Lost My Faith
07. My Dearest One
08. I Am Who I Am
09. Spiritually Possessed
10. Seven Days Weekend

Ureas is a new combo made in Denmark, and well, musically speaking it's a really original new band. Between Power and Progressive Metal with some really nice touches of dark Music (that reminds me Nick Cave's Murder Ballads? don't ask me why) their first album is surprising but unfortunately a bit unequal.

When it comes to the music, Ureas plays something really nice. I mean that it's not so easy to listen to this kind of original progressive music nowadays. Between Power and Prog, with some dark touches the songs of "The Naked Truth" remind me a bit the ones of Beyond Twilight but not so Progressive though, a bit more Pop in reason of the voice of Heidi Johansson and a bit more electronic in reason of the industrial sounds that we can find on some songs like "Seven Days Weekend". Also, you must know that we have some guests on the album and IA plays (as always) two amazing soli on "Colour Us Blind" et "Seven Days Weekend". It's cool to see some guys like him or Frederik Hansen, they help a lot for the diversity of the album which is already, by the way, all but not linear.

The voice of Per Johansson, main compositor of the band, sounds a bit like the one of Ozzy. So if you like this kind of tortured voices I'm sure that you'll love the voice of Per. On the other hand, we have also a female singer on the release, Miss Heidi Johansson. And that's the main problem of the album. I don't know if it is her voice that it is just weak or not but they put a ton of effects on her vocals and at the end, she sounds like a dying goat (do you remember Liv Kristine on "Assembly"? Well that's not better and probably even worst!). It's a shame because her special voice is not so bad on a side, but the numerous effects kill its purity and at the end it's just horrible to listen to it. I hope that the band will do something to fix this problem in the future really?

"The Naked Truth" is not a bad album but well all is not perfect and at the end it's just something average. Don't believe though, that all is already over for the combo, their music is good and original and with time I'm quite sure that it will be better. But some problems will have to be fixed. That's up to you now but I'm sure that some people will love this band like some others will hate it!