Band:	Sandalinas
Album:	Living On The Edge
Style:	Melodic progressive metal
Website:	http://www.sandalinas.com
Release date:	February 28, 2005
A review by:	Malcolm

01. Living On The Edge
02. All Along The Everglades
03. The Ritual Of Truth
04. Follow Me
05. If It Wasn't For You
06. The Day The Earth Died
07. The Conqueror
08. Heaven In You
09. Back In Time
10. Die Hard

Sandalinas, newcomers with experience members. That's a good way to describe the band Sandalinas, names after the Spanish guitarist and main-man Jordi Sandalinas, maybe our next guitar-diva, hehe. Joke aside; Jordi is too much of a team player to go greedy.
And Sandalinas will be much better as a band then as a one-man show, that's for sure.

Well, let's focus on this piece of debut album, that feature experience artists like singer Apollo (Time Requiem & Meduza) and drummer Daniel Molianen (Runemagick, Relevant Few & Notre Dame), and with a producer and guest musicians like Andy LaRocque (King Diamond) Jordi must have really wrote a good album, don't you think?

And I have to say he has, "Living on the Edge" is one hell of an album. This music is almost unique; Sandalinas mixes Heavy Metal guitars with more AOR rhythm and vocals.
Might not sound that original right? But it sounds much better musically then me writing about it, it's something you really should hear before judging.

The albums gets going with the title-track "Living on the Edge", and already here you'll be able to hear exactly what Sandalinas stands for, great songs with much Heavy Metal riffing and AOR-alike rhythm and with Apollo behind the microphone, this is a deadly combination.
Second song, "All Along the Everglades" is the first song that contains Andy's playing; it's another up-tempo song that's even better than the first.

The first slower song we'll get is "Follow Me" that starts with some slow yelling guitars. A very good mid-tempo song that shows us another way of riffing, the repeating riffing, fits very good in the sound and with Apollo's voice, a little Epic song.
"If it Wasn't for You" is my favourite, it starts with Jordi's playing, a bright playing and when the vocals comes in it's great, the chorus is wonderful, very catchy.

The album keeps on mixing slower songs with faster ones all until the end, so it doesn't matter if you're into fast or slow songs, you'll get what you like here.
But if I shall mention something that's bad, I have to say the variation, sure you'll get up-tempo, mid-tempo and slow songs, but they are just a bit to alike each other, some "experiments" wouldn't have been that wrong. But in general I have to say that it's a strong debut and I hope many will discover Sandalinas, because they are worth it.

Check Out: "If it Wasn't for You", "All Along the Everglades", "Living on the Edge" & "Die Hard".