Band:	Urban Tales
Album:	Diary Of A No
Style:	Alternative metal, Gothic rock
Release date:	2007
A review by:	Bas

01. Prison Inside
02. In Purity
03. The Rise
04. Youll Never Know
05. Fade Away
06. Stronger
07. Fall
08. Crawl
09. Until I Died
10. Farewell
11. Urban Tales / The End [bonus]

"Diary Of A No" is the debut of the Portuguese band Urban Tales. The first song "Prison Inside" already pretty much shows us what we're at with this album. After an intro which basically consists of a phone ring, the track turns out to be a melodic rock song with traces of alternative metal and a minimalist keyboard.

This is roughly what most of the album sounds like. It's somewhere in between rock and metal with a few minor alternative elements and a lot of melodic and very emotional passages. There are also some heavier moments though. For example the second track "In Purity" of which the beginning is reminiscent of Paradise Lost.

Exactly that is one of the strongest things of this album. While most of it is melodic music with a few alternative influences, Urban Tales built a lot of "extras" into this CD to make sure that every song is something special. On some songs we've got a female vocalist in the background supporting the main male singer, in others the vocalist screams in some passages, in one track we've even got a short hiphoppish passage. "You'll never know" (one of the best songs here in my opinion) starts with a short aggressive-sounding intro and then turns into a very melodic, a bit popish perhaps, song. Others are more aggressive, some have minimalist keyboard lines in the background, others don't, a few even have tribal elements in them.

I have the feeling that the band decided on a certain direction but also that no single song is allowed to sound the same, and added a lot of other elements to their songs. I really wish more bands would do it this way, because it really makes me want to listen the whole CD through once I've started.

In the end this is a pretty good CD, however I believe many will be turned off by it because it's too "soft" or too "easy." Perhaps others will be turned off by the small alternative elements (a la Ill Niño). If you don't mind that, though, you could like this band extremely well, because this is a really, really strong emotional and melodic album with enough variety to never get boring.