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Enchant - Time Lost

Artist:	Enchant
Title:	Time Lost
Label:	Inside Out IOMCD 012
Length(s):	53 minutes
Year(s) of release:	1997
Month of review:	06/1997

Line up

Benignus - keyboards
Paul Craddick - drums
Ted Leonard - vocals
Duglas A. Ott - guitars
Ed Platt - bass

Tracks

1)	Blind Sided	6.24
2)	New Moon	8.22
3)	Under The Sun	7.29
4)	Foundations	6.08
5)	Interact	10.49
6)	Standing Ground	5.29
7)	Mettle Man	8.24

Summary

The first four tracks are new tracks from the Wounded sessions, while the last three are oldies that I guess have never seen release up to this point. This should have been a mini with just the first four but they chose to append the newly recorded oldies as well. I do not have listened to Wounded, but have listened to their Blueprint for the World.

The music

Characteristic for Enchant is the heavy guitar sound and the typical vocals that both tend to hard rock or progressive metal, but still the music is not exactly that. Leonard has a good voice that in the higher registers can be compared to that of many a progressive metal band. I do think Leonard should not sing high that much, also because it he has this tendency to draw out the words too much: I-hiiiiggghhh (where anyone else would have sung "I") and that with his tendency to always go up at the end of his line, it can be a bit annoying. Because he can also sing very well in lower keys, I would like him to do this more often and use the full flexibility of his voice.

Blind Sided is a typical example of an Enchant track with a subtle and well sung opening, powerful guitars and high vocals in the middle and subtle keyboards in the rather quiet ending. The other tracks do differ in ingredients a little, but for the most part each song consists of quieter and more energetic parts, where the guitar and high vocals figure most in the latter. Still, stylistically all the tracks have a sameness over them, and it is the melody if anything that makes the difference between them most easily heard and if anyone would let me hear any random track from the album I would have a hard time pinning it down on one. Also, the music on this CD is in fact quite similar to Blueprint for the World and I would advise the band to try some others things as well. Not that I don't like their music, but it seems that their style is quite restricted. Even stronger, the songs that were written much earlier aren't that much different from the new ones, although I must admit that a track like Interact sounds in some places a little like Marillion (some of keyboard parts remind me of Incommunicado and also some of the guitar parts sound familiar). Also in Interact the band plays around for a while in a way that seems less than meaningful to me and on the whole this long track is not so strong a composition as the previous four. Of the last tracks Standing Ground contains quite a lot of percussion, while Mettle Man sounds more orchestral is more standard progressive. It contains more keyboards than most of the tracks and is surprisingly almost instrumental. A nice closer.

Musically the band can be compared to Jadis, but the sound is a little more updated and the vocalist is technically a lot better. The music of Enchant is not as complicated as much of the progressive metal in that it does contain mood and melody changes, but the music isn't as fast and the signature changes seem relatively few. Melody seems to be more important than technical prowess and I guess I like them the better for it.

Conclusion

This band lies somewhere between progressive metal and ordinary progressive rock of the modern kind (i.e. Jadis) with keyboards in the back and the guitar and vocals up front. More on the background we have varied drumming, occassional acoustic guitar and some nice keyboard parts. Modern progressive rock with strong melodies and tight performance but unfortunately a sameness to the music.