LIVE AT LAST

Live At Last exists in a double CD and as well as a DVD version and is the one and only live release so far from Enchant. The massive set list features songs from all of the band's studio albums up to the point of this two and a half hour performance. As they announce to the audience between two of the songs, they perform "a third of everything we've recorded"! Despite many great moments, this is a lot to digest in one sitting, and in my view it is a bit too much.

They open with Mae Dae/At Death's Door from their excellent 1995 debut album A Blueprint Of The World - a perfect way to begin the show! A further three songs from this album appear at various points in the set, all of them great as well. From the band's second album Wounded from 1996 comes two strong numbers, and another two are picked from 1997's Time Lost. The songs taken from these early albums are, in my opinion, by far the best ones included on this live album. But this is far less than half of what we get here.

The two songs performed from Break (1998) are both good as well, but the nine songs in total from Juggling 9 Or Dropping 10 (2000) and Blink Of And Eye (2002) are of varying quality. I personally don't like the latter two albums, and I honestly find some of these songs quite lame. Exceptions include the respective opening tracks from these albums (Paint The Picture and Under Fire), which are acceptable, as well as the acoustic versions of Black Eyes & Broken Glass and Colors Fade, which at least are improvements over their studio counterparts. Songs like Broken Wave, Monday, What To Say, and Follow The Sun, on the other hand, are utterly pedestrian and bring the value of the live recording down a bit.

Finally, from their most recent album at the time of the performance - 2003's Tug Of War - comes three selections, which are quite good (though still not up to the high standards of the songs from the band's three first albums). One of these is an instrumental that, despite the cheesy title Progtology, works wonders to bring a little bit of much needed variety to the set. They obviously have great talent on their respective instruments.

In sum, though Live At Last contains great performances of some of Enchant's best songs, it sadly also includes a fair number of lesser songs, and with such a long running time they fail to keep this listener enchanted throughout. The impact of the music would surely had been greater if they had concentrated their efforts to, say, one and a half hours of high quality material. That would probably have earned Live At Last an extra star, but as it stands it is definitely a good live record.

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