Artist: Mad Max 
   Title: White Sands
   Label: AOR / Metal Heaven

If there's one way to win someone over in this music genre than have a 'fist in the air' track on your cd's and luckily for Mad Max they open their account on their latest album 'White Sands' with just that, the slightly cheesily named 'Family Of Rock', which will no doubt have their fans punching the air when in concert.

I must admit that Michael Voss's voice sounds a bit on the whiney side to begin with but as each song comes and goes it seems to settle in and on the very Jovi-esque 'Little Princess' and 'Someone Like You', he proves he can easily hit the high notes without any problem.

The band shows off it's easy on the ear melodic style with 'Heaven Is' and 'Glorious Night' where they make you think of where had you heard them before as both songs are of a very tried and tested formula used amongst a lot of bands around at the moment and even from a few years back.  Better to be safe than sorry maybe?

It's also good to see an instrumental actually appearing as it's not that often it happens, so on 'Lluvia' it's the turn of Jurgen Breforth, Roland Bergmann and Axel Kruse to show exactly what they can do and with the twin guitars taking main stage, they do themselves proud!  They also show they can pull out the heavier stuff when they want with 'We Fight In White' and 'War' really giving a "kick up the butt" touch to the album which it needed at times and should keep the heavy metal set happy if they're willing to give this band a listen too, and as Mad Max have been around for quite a while one way or another, I'd be surprised if they hadn't heard of them already.

'White Sands' is what I'd call a comfortable cd to listen to as its sound is really nothing new compared to some of the new stuff and fits in with a lot of music I usually listen to and will probably appeal to a lot of AOR fans out there.  

Review by Bob Baldwin.

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