WOUNDED

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.