WOUNDED

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 the realm of double-bass in the drums. Songs like "fade to grey" and "Distractions" are the best of the record. A nice addition to the record collection of fans and begginers in the prog-metal venue

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 have for any prog fan.

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.

''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.

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.

"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. It´s 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. It´s 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. It´s 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)

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.

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, expectations were high for its follow-up.

Sadly, they're expectations that I feel the band couldn't live up to.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Enchant, but 'Wounded' has always been that little hiccup in their discography where things just don't click for me. As before, the musicianship is impeccable and Ted Leonard's vocals are fantastic as always, but the songs just "aren't happening" as they were before.

There are a few highlights, though. Tracks like 'Below Zero', 'Pure', 'Hostile World' and 'Missing' are all good, and in fact, none of the songs are bad, but they're just not overly memorable either, especially when compared to the bands later material.

Enchant are one of my favourite groups, and it pains me to say this, but 'Wounded' is just an all-round forgettable release.

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: ***

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.

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.

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 influences, choosing instead a more direct approach by both simplifying and "metalizing" their sound. Was this a change for the better? It's hard to say. On the one hand, the new approach will be pivotal for the development of Enchant's sound in subsequent albums. So, in a way, Wounded is an obligatory passage point for the band's future. On the other hand, it's hard to deny that Wounded is overall a step-back in terms of quality of songwriting compared to their previous record. In fact, after the opening three songs, the album quickly sinks into a sea of forgettable averageness from which it never recovers.

In many ways, Wounded is a unique-sounding album in Enchant's catalogue. It's their heaviest record by far, mainly thanks to guitarist Doug Ott's newfound approach, as he mostly abandons his signature light-touch, clean-tone, vaguely jazzy playing in favour of more distortion and riffing. This brings the songs closer to the typical prog metal sound, with the music's backbone mainly comprised of rhythmic but melodic guitar licks, often doubled by Ed Platt's bass. Drummer Paul Craddick complements the new approach well, with a punchier and groovier performance that considerably limits his usual complex and variegated playing. Even vocalist Ted Leonard adapts his singing to embrace the new direction, by injecting more power into his voice with a performance that is at times reminiscent of Dream Theater's James LaBrie.

This heavier direction is complemented by a general simplification of the arrangements and songwriting. The songs are now more chorus-focused, with a structure that consists of repeated verse-chorus sequences interrupted by instrumental sections that give Doug Ott and keyboard player Michael Geimer some room to engage in their usual duelling solos. The arrangements are also more straightforward, with fewer changes between songs' sections, making the music more accessible compared to the debut album. The song length, however, has not decreased much - and in fact all tracks go beyond the 6-minute mark. Given the more direct nature of the material, this is not exactly a good thing, as many songs tend to overstay their welcome with excessive repetitions that do not add much to the overall effect.

The main problem of this album, however, is that a lot of the songs are quite generic and average - lacking strong melodies or interesting arrangements that can fully engage the listener. In fact, Enchant seem to have spent their best ideas in the first three album's tracks, "Below Zero", "Fade 2 Grey" and "Pure". The opening track is absolutely phenomenal - one of Enchant's best songs tout court. Here the new heavy/direct approach really shines, in Doug Ott's crunchy riff and Ted Leonard's beautiful, gritty vocal approach. "Fade 2 Grey" is interesting because it features hints of the band's classic prog rock style, but mixed to the new heavier direction, while "Pure" stands out thanks to its beautiful dynamics and another excellent performance by Ted. The remaining six song, however, are nowhere near the quality level of the opening trio - perhaps with the exception of the gutsy "Look Away". There is nothing particularly wrong with these tracks, except that they sound terribly middle-of-the-road and very similar to one another, making the second half of the album quite difficult to sit through without losing focus. The slightly muddy and rough production does not help either - another step back compared to some of the excellent-sounding songs included in A Blueprint of the World.

All considered, it's hard not to see Wounded as a transitional record - and Enchant will in fact quickly change direction on their next (proper) full-length Break, after the interlocutory EP/LP Time Lost. Wounded is nevertheless an important stepping stone for Break and all the albums that will follow. While Enchant will by and large stay away from the heavy, riff-laden sound one can hear on this album, the simplified, more direct approach that they pioneered on Wounded will be a constant characteristic of the band's future sound. Thus, while not my favourite Enchant' album, Wounded has definitely a place in the band's discography as an essential bridge to their true sonic identity.