Tales, the second album from Spain's Tears of Martyr, reminds me a lot of Nightwish's debut, Angels Fall First. It is full of beautiful operatic vocals, lush keyboard melodies, crunchy guitar riffs and Power Metal-inspired double-kick drums. I admit it took more than a couple of spins for Tales to really open my ears but the time invested was well spent. The track "Golem" makes good use of the "beauty and the beast" vocal style while "Vampires of the Sunset Street" employs a spoken word interlude similar to Nightwish's "Elvenpath." There are spots on Tales where the vocals are too operatic and don't quite mesh with the metal songwriting, but these aren't huge hurdles. There are no true killer tracks but little filler, so Tales is solid and enjoyable from beginning to end. The biggest knock on Tears of Martyr is that they sound a LOT like Nightwish but since they do it quite well and Nightwish doesn't make music like this anymore, I'm happy to let them fill the void.