Tales of Magic is the debut album from Planeswalker, a band that plays Magic: The Gathering-themed power metal. It is a familiar style, featuring the double-kick drums, high, clear vocals and sweet melodies pioneered back at the turn of the millennium by Rhapsody, Sonata Arctica and Edguy. Songs like "Blackblade" have the speed and catchy vocal lines that so many bands have attempted but rarely hit it so squarely on the head as Planeswalker have done on this cut. "The Forever Serpent" dips into the sea-shanty/pirate theme but not so much that the song becomes parody like Running Wild or Alestorm. "Oath of the Gatewatch" is the requisite "epic" number, clocking in at over 10 minutes but Planeswalker bring in some new voices, male and female, which provides both definition to the characters and counterpoint to the vocals, so it isn't the same for the entirety of the song. There are other tracks that aren't as memorable and are "merely" solid power metal tunes, but the whole album is a cut or two above a lot of the rehashed symphonic/neoclassical/"flower" metal out there and I recommend it to anyone that is a fan of the luminaries of the style.