Progarchives, the progressive rock ultimate discography

WOUNDED

Enchant

Heavy Prog


From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Enchant Wounded album cover
3.35 | 115 ratings | 12 reviews | 14% 5 stars

Good, but non-essential

Write a review

Buy ENCHANT Music
from Progarchives.com partners
Studio Album, released in 1996

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Below Zero (6:07)
2. Fade 2 Grey (8:10)
3. Pure (7:17)
4. Broken (7:44)
5. Hostile World (6:29)
6. Look Away (6:40)
7. Armour (6:57)
8. Distractions (7:27)
9. Missing (6:36)

Total time: 63:27

Line-up / Musicians

- Ted Leonard / vocals
- Douglas Ott / guitars, keyboards (1,4,9), production & mixing
- Michael "Benignus" Geimer / keyboards
- Ed Platt / bass
- Paul Craddick / drums, keyboards (4)

With:
- Phil Bennet / keyboards (1,9)

Releases information

Artwork: Rick Geimer with Gus Fjelstrom (logo)

CD Inside Out Music ‎- IOMCD 007 (1996, Germany)
CD Magna Carta ‎- MA-9020-2 (1997, US)

Thanks to ProgLucky for the addition
and to Quinino for the last updates
Edit this entry

Buy ENCHANT Wounded Music



ENCHANT Wounded ratings distribution


3.35
(115 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(14%)
14%
Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(41%)
41%
Good, but non-essential (32%)
32%
Collectors/fans only (9%)
9%
Poor. Only for completionists (4%)
4%

ENCHANT Wounded reviews


Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings

Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by Mellotron Storm
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars I really love ENCHANT's early stuff, the sound is so raw, not so polished. And the highlight of their music for me are the amazing vocals of Ted Leonard.

The record starts off with "Below Zero" a song about regret. There is this cool riff throughout and some great solos. "Fade 2 Grey" is a song about growing old, and it's great, with some terrific axe work and synths, and of course the vocals shine. "Pure" is slower paced with acoustic guitar and has a beautiful, emotional ending.

"Broken" features a wondrous guitar melody and passionate vocals, it seems like everyone is holding back on this one until Ted lets it rip and the lead guitarist does too with a rousing solo. "Hostile World" opens darkly and check out the bass playing ! Great drumming and scorching guitar equal a powerful ending. "Look Away" is about not changing for other people, instead telling them if they don't like what they see "look away". "Armour" is another good one. I love the low end sounding guitar. Some good keyboard passages and two guitar solos. "Distractions" is an ok tune, while "Missing" gets heavy at times.

Overall an excellent release that I can highly recommend.

Review by apps79
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
3 stars ''A blueprint of the world'' was good enough to offer Enchant their first European tour, shortly after the album was released.The Americans were considered one of the biggest hopes in the emerging world of Progressive Rock and Magna Carta acted accordingly, working on a re-edition of the band's debut in 1995.Next followed the sophomore effort of Enchant, ''Wounded'', which was originally released in 1996 on InsideOut for the European market and in 1997 on Magna Carta for the US one.

Sounds and sights of Enchant's instrumental motiffs become even more clear with the second album.Their main influence appear to be RUSH and their Power Rock approach, which passes through the intense, expressive lyricism of QUEENSRYCHE, when the vocals or smoother guitar parts come in the forefront, but also flirts with the atmospheric sound of MARILLION during the melodic guitar solos or the sporadic, more pronounced deep keyboard lines.They did perform in a pretty personal style, which was led by the hard-hitting guitars, the bombastic rhythms, the tendency towards some slightly orchestral still quirky keyboard flashes and the high-pitch voice of Ted Leonard.''Wounded'' somehow is missing some of the debut's freshness, a few tracks sound pretty similar or this work lacks a pair of killer pieces, like ''The thirst'' or ''Oasis'' from the previous album.Yet, it's unlikely the listener not to enjoy this work.Enchant play music with sheer passion, energy and dynamics, keeping one foot in the RUSH principles, while the other walks on the contemporary ground of 90's music.Moreover, with each release the band is pretty hard not to be recognized from the very first notes, Douglas Ott's lovely moves between melodic and harder guitars and the grandiose, background synthesizers are trademarks of Enchant's upcoming empire.

The journey of Enchant into the prog realms continues with ''Wounded''.Not as good as the band's impressive debut, but this one is a nice example of powerful Prog Rock with a fine balance between melody and energy.Recommended.

Review by progrules
PROG REVIEWER
4 stars It's high time to give a review on this album because I noticed this album is seriously underrated. I mean if there are 9 songs on the album and 6 of them are really very good, it's wrong that this album has an average of 3,3. It's a shame really. On the other hand I do agree that this isn't a masterpiece. Enchant has done better in their history although this is a very good album. I'll give a rating for each song and short description because there is quality difference between the songs.

1. Below Zero: nice heavy track. Good opener. 4 stars

2. Fade to grey. This one is even better, with a very good guitar solo (Ott's great). Great track. 4,5 stars.

3. Pure. A fantastic ballad, probably the most beautiful song Enchant has ever produced (together with Comatose). 5 stars.

4. Broken. This is somewhat less. A slower song without much impact (at least on me). 2,75 stars.

5. Hostile world. A great track again, in quality equal to Below Zero, so 4 stars.

6. Look away. Another beautiful song, but somewhat more powerful than Pure. 4,5 stars.

7. Armour. Good track, a little less than 1. and 5. 3,75 stars.

8. Distractions. One of the less impressive. 3 stars.

9. Missing. Same actually. 3 stars.

So it's a clear case that this is better than 3,3 average. I come to an average of well 3,8. And I wanted to give this one 4 stars in the first place. So that's about right. don't you think ? Recommended to lovers of melodic heavy prog.

Review by UMUR
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
3 stars "Wounded" is the second full-length studio album by US progressive rock/metal act Enchant. The album was originally released in 1996 through Dream Circle Records but it saw a more widespread release in 1997 through InsideOut Music in Europe and through Magna Carta Records in The United States. Itīs the successor to "A Blueprint Of The World" from 1993. The quintet lineup who recorded the debut album is intact on "Wounded".

"Wounded" features a slightly harder edged progressive rock/metal sound to the sound on "A Blueprint Of The World" (1993), but Enchant are generally not a very hard edged or heavy metal oriented band. Their songs can be relatively heavy though. The music is dynamic and often shifts between mellow verses and more loud and catchy choruses featuring the soaring high pitched vocals of Ted Leonard. The rhythm section are skilled and drive the music forward, but to my ears the omnipresent use of thin sounding slap bass is completely out of key with the rest of the music. A more conventional bass style would have suited the material much better.

The songwriting is relatively straight forward vers/chorus structured, but does feature instrumental sections to spice things up. Itīs not overtly complex music though. "Wounded" was produced by guitarist Douglas A. Ott, who also produced half of the tracks on "A Blueprint Of The World" (1993), and although he does a slighly better job here, than he did on the not very well sounding debut album, "Wounded" is still not a professional sounding release to my ears. The vocals sound detached from the remaining part of the music, the guitars are placed too low in the mix, and the drums also feature a rather strange tone. "Wounded" is just not a very well sounding release.

When that is said "Wounded" still has quite a few redeeming qualities making it a decent quality release. Itīs an album for fans of hard edged progressive rock or soft progressive metal, which is intriguing, but not too challenging. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)

Review by SouthSideoftheSky
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Symphonic Team
3 stars Fade 2 Grey

A year after their debut, Enchant released their second album entitled Wounded. While the sound is better than on the debut, the material is overall much weaker with only a couple of the album's tracks being up to par with the A Blueprint Of The World songs. Like on most of Enchant's albums, the best songs come at the beginning with the absolute highlight being the opener Below Zero which features amazing guitar work. After the three first tracks, all of which are very good, the album begins to "fade to grey" somewhat with some of the songs during the second half tending to feel like just more of the same.

Wounded shows a somewhat narrower set of influences compared with the band's debut with the dominant influence being early Dream Theater. Even though there are still flavours of Rush and Marillion, this is more of a progressive Metal album than anything else. The musicianship is very strong throughout and vocalist Ted Leonard still bears an uncanny resemblance to Kansas' Steve Walsh.

Despite some weaker tracks during the second half of the album, Wounded is one of Enchant's better albums and it is overall a worthwhile addition to any collection that already holds their best album - A Blueprint Of The World.

Review by The Crow
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars Second album from the heavy prog band Enchant!

Driven by the excellent Ted Leonard's vocals and the very good guitars of Douglas Ott, the band managed to make an album which has more personality and genuine ideas than their debut. But sadly, the quality of the songs is not so high in general terms and sometimes the band sounds too similar to other acts like Dream Theater.

Nevertheless, the biggest problem I find with Wounded is that all the tracks sound very similar. Sometimes is hard to discern which track are we hearing, because the vocals sounds the same, guitars too, keys too and the production is identical. That fact makes this album difficult to enjoy in its integrity and in successive playing.

Conclusion: despite its repetitiveness, derivative ideas and some lackluster songs, Wounded is a good album, which will surely delight heavy prog fans thanks mainly to the great vocals and good instrumental work.

Best Tracks: Below Zero (impressive vocals), Pure (a fine mid-tempo) and Look Away (great chorus and beautiful vocal melodies)

My rating: ***

Review by A Crimson Mellotron
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars Enchant is always a welcome jab of that tasty 90s prog rock sound, and in their own melodic way of presenting it as an elegant hybrid between the romantic 80s Marillion feel and the mightier, heavier and quite technical bravado of a band like Rush (perhaps with sprinkles of old school Dream Theater here and there), it is quite an enjoyable musical escape when the listener seeks a band that can propose simultaneously digestible, melodic and thoughtful rock songs that do not fit the radio-friendly format and dare to go off the rulebook, sometimes gleaming with instrumental prowess, and sometimes with visionary narrative lyrical content. The band's second studio release, 'Wounded' from 1996 does all of this very well - this also happens to be the second album recorded by the classic lineup of Ted Leonard (vocals), Doug Ott (guitars), Mike Geimer (keys), Ed Platt (bass), and Paul Craddick (drums), presenting a solid collection of nine new compositions that seek to expand the sound of their fabulous 1993 debut album 'A Blueprint of the World'.

However, as unfortunately as it might sound, 'Blueprint' was way too good to be bettered, and this is confirmed upon experiencing the full 1996 release by Enchant - the album is packed with intense, heavy, yet melancholic songs that do a great job of solidifying the sound that the band was going for at that time, but sound slightly overplayed and prolonged, too; At around sixty-three minutes of playtime, 'Wounded' does feel a bit tiring, and the sole reason for that is the fact that there is some filler, some passages that do not necessarily contribute much, like in the songs 'Hostile World', 'Look Away' or 'Armour', all three of them falling thin on the more forgettable side of things. Then again, one should praise the phenomenal lead guitar playing by Doug Ott all throughout, his masterful control of the instrument is surely an improvement over the guitar sound on 'Blueprint' as well as the great bass licks of Ed Platt, also displaying enviable technicality and feel. Ted Leonard sounds well, his lyrics are once again very touching, very beautiful. Among the highlights of the album are the opening track 'Below Zero', the epic 'Fade 2 Gray', one of the really better Enchant songs, 'Broken', with its moody shifts and great chorus, and the album closer 'Missing' where the band really let themselves go to mad.

Had it been reduced to five or six tracks, and clocking in between 35 and 40 minutes, 'Wounded' would have been a much stronger and better received successor to the massively impressive debut album 'A Blueprint of the World'. It is still a good album full of great songs, and a nice suggestion for anyone seeking something different that is both technical and enjoyable.

Review by Warthur
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars It took a little while for Enchant to come back to the studio to record their second album, Wounded, and what's immediately apparent when you listen to it is that their sound has shifted in comparison to the style they aired on A Blueprint of the World.

That was largely steeped in UK-style neo-prog - with touches of Marillion, IQ, and Jadis being apparent - with perhaps a bit of Kansas influence on the side, and you'll still hear flashes of that here, especially in the quieter moments, such as the opening of Fade 2 Grey. Keep listening just a touch after that intro, though, and you'll hear the big difference this time around kick in; there's an extensive amount of Dream Theater influence which has crept into their sound (along with perhaps a touch of Rush, but you can't really be all that influenced by 1990s Dream Theater without getting a little Rush in the mix anyway).

It's not that they go prog metal here - not quite all the way, at any rate - so much as they've decided to explore the sonic gap between neo-prog and Dream Theater-style prog metal without entirely entering the territory of prog metal proper. As mentioned, in quieter moments they do seem to return to their neo-prog comfort zone, at least briefly, but even the heavier moments on the album would be the sort of thing which sounds more like a rock band incorporating a bit of metal influence than a metal band rocking out, though obviously the line there's rather fine.

As a result of all this, it's a bit of a transitional album, and also one which feels somehow less fresh than their debut; mix together several different neo-prog influences and you might sound a bit more original, whereas Enchant's main inspiration here seems to have been "gotta sound more like Dream Theater"; by far the weakest parts of the album are those where it sounds like they're about to drift into full clone mode. Nonetheless, it just about won me over - because even when it would threaten to do that, a curveball would come out and shake me out of that feeling, Enchant having retained just enough of their previous style here that they'll occasionally zig where you'd expect Dream Theater to zag.

The album's major fault in terms of execution is the mix on Ted Leonard's voice; in some sections it sounds absolutely fine, but in others it feels a little disconnected from the music; album opener Below Zero suffers especially from this, which is unhelpful because it means the album leads off with a bad first impression. Wounded, along with its companion album Time Lost, got put out as a remastered 2CD set in 2002 by InsideOut, with a similar remastering job as A Blueprint of the World received that same year, and to my ears a credible job has been done of trying to correct for this, but it's clear that there was only so much that could be done on that front.

This is a real shame, because Ted Leonard's vocals are such an asset to the group, so if they aren't being showcased properly then Enchant are really not coming across in their best light. On the whole, I still think this is a good, entertaining album - say three and a half stars, round up to 3.75 if you are a keen prog fan (particularly if you like Dream Theater and neo-prog) - but it just has too much baggage to hit the fourth star.

Latest members reviews

3 stars Sophomore albums don't come easy and Wounded, Enchant's second full-length, is no exception. The US prog rockers had debuted three years earlier with A Blueprint of the World, a strong album showcasing all their rich neoprogressive inclinations. On Wounded the band considerably dial back those influ ... (read more)

Report this review (#2940497) | Posted by lukretio | Sunday, July 16, 2023 | Review Permanlink

2 stars Enchant's debut, 'A Blueprint of the World', caused a bit of a stir in the prog world when it was released back in 1993. With a combination of good songwriting and solid musicianship, catchy hooks and a sound that would appeal to fans of old progressive rock or the rising progressive metal scene ... (read more)

Report this review (#1777776) | Posted by martindavey87 | Saturday, September 2, 2017 | Review Permanlink

4 stars This is one of my favorite albums they did (time lost is probably my favorite). They are, of course heavily influenced by dream theater, and they pull it off quite well (not like the usual slew of bands that try it but miss). Clean music with great guitars and nice little twists. This is a must ... (read more)

Report this review (#1892) | Posted by the_3d_man | Wednesday, January 12, 2005 | Review Permanlink

4 stars Sometimes the second record turns the band into superstars, but in this case, a better record with more "colors and textures" ground them into oblivion because of lack of support of the label. Now... the compositions in here turns into more matture environment, and Paul Craddick turn himself into th ... (read more)

Report this review (#1890) | Posted by | Wednesday, April 14, 2004 | Review Permanlink

Post a review of ENCHANT "Wounded"

You must be a forum member to post a review, please register here if you are not.

MEMBERS LOGIN ZONE

As a registered member (register here if not), you can post rating/reviews (& edit later), comments reviews and submit new albums.

You are not logged, please complete authentication before continuing (use forum credentials).

Forum user
Forum password

Copyright Prog Archives, All rights reserved. | Legal Notice | Privacy Policy | Advertise | RSS + syndications

Other sites in the MAC network: JazzMusicArchives.com — jazz music reviews and archives | MetalMusicArchives.com — metal music reviews and archives

Donate monthly and keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.