Finland based female fronted Metal duo THE PASSION OF OUR SOULS have released their first achievement, a debut EP called "Soulmates". It contains four similar sounding songs of a genre they call themselves Melodic Death Pop Metal. I can see where they're coming from. The guitars are melodic and have a poppy sound, especially when singer Julia Mattila uses her clean voice. When she uses her harsh screaming voice, which by the way doesn't become her well, it has that more brutal Death Metal sound.

The record contains four well-crafted, similar sounding songs. They certainly have chosen their own style, their own kind of music they want to play. They start off with a song called "Give Me Your Soul", where Mattila immediately displays her brutal screaming voice. If you didn't know, you wouldn't have guessed she was a woman. I actually thought there were two vocalists at the start. That being said, the grunting screaming voice ruins it a little for me. The melodies and guitar playing are very cool, very compelling, but it all falls to nothing because of the voice. If she had only used clean singing, it would have been a very decent debut effort.

They go on with the second song, "Everything", which is very similar to "Give Me your Soul". After that there's "What Tomorrow Brings", which is a little more laidback, a little more slow than the previous ones and where Samuli Makela displays some excellent rhythmic guitar playing. With "Till Death Do Us Part" they finish the EP the same way they started it. With cool melodies and a brutal female voice that ruins it.

In the end, the record wasn't at all bad, especially the music was pretty good, but I was so tired of that same repetitive and irritating grunting voice that I was already kind of glad it was over, even if it only contained four songs.<