THE GREAT DIVIDE

11 years after their previous studio album, Enchant returned in 2014 with The Great Divide. It seems that the band's fans are somewhat "divided" over this album, but personally I think it is easily their best since the 1990's and much superior to their previous three studio records (which I didn't like much). Indeed, I think this album even rivals Break and I would rank it just below Wounded. Like the latter 1996 album, for example, The Great Divide also has its best three songs right at the beginning with Circles, Within An Inch, and the title track all being very strong compositions. The keyboard sound often reminds me of Dream Theater's classic Images And Words. After these first three tracks, however, the album seems to lose some of its initial magic and quickly settles into the band's comfort zone of melodic, mildly progressive Rock.

The musicianship it top notch throughout and the production values are high, but the inspiration falters on a few of the tracks. The album's low points are Transparent Man and Life In A Shadow which feature choruses that are just to middle-of-the-road for my tastes. The album's final two tracks are again better but not up to par with the opening triad.

Despite that the album's best songs come at the beginning and that it holds some weaker songs in the middle, I still think the decade long hiatus seems to have done the band a great deal of good. In the meantime, vocalist Ted Leonard and keyboarder Bill Jenkins contributed to the amazing band Thought Chamber whose 2013 album Psykerion is absolutely magnificent. Leonard also sang with Transatlantic and Spock's Beard. What the rest of the Enchant members have been up to I couldn't say.

The Great Divide is a good Enchant album, but certainly not essential. I hope that another live album is forthcoming from Enchant as I would love to hear some of these songs performed live.

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