Artist: Enchant
Label: Inside Out Records
Release: 1996
Rating: 4.5/5
Barely a year after their debut, Enchant carried on down the path they’d laid out and went one step further. With the album itself titled “wounded,” you can guess the guys got a bit heavier. Yep. The songs are even harder on the ear. They crawl under your skin even harder than the debut did, although “A Blueprint Of The World” (1995) was hardly an innocent little lamb either. But once it gets under your skin, whoa!
Below Zero, which opens the record, is wound tight and heavier than any Enchant song until then. On Below Zero Paul also used a double bass pedal for the first time. The rhythm section is insanely grooving across the whole album. Dynamic, unpredictable rhythm changes, every kind of transition you can think of, and once again the unbelievably tight work of Ed and Paul keep “Wounded” alive from start to finish. The middle sections are once again as “Enchant-ized” as you could wish for. Fragmented into lots of little stories within the story, they weave together brilliantly and click into cohesive wholes, song by song.
The production is cohesive and balanced too, now at a much higher level than on the band’s debut, where there was still plenty of room to grow. Every instrument is separate and clearly audible. None of them takes over from the others. Doug’s playing is a real treat again. He simply lets his ideas come to life through the musical uniqueness the guy has managed to develop. Doug has that harder-edged touch and an exceptional feel for music. How to set up a riff, where to break up the chords, and how to simply dot the line. He’s only confirmed his talent with a few outstanding, emotional solos and transitions. He (again) combines acoustic parts with distorted ones brilliantly. The unpredictable guitar work is one more superlative for Enchant’s music. The musical multidimensionality, along with the magic between the band members, works perfectly.
Ted’s vocals, which besides being instantly recognizable sound like a kind of siren in the higher registers, reminiscent of Steve Walsh (Kansas), are constantly colored with emotion and keep the lyrics alive. The guy improvises incredibly well and, say, over a riff that repeats, he’ll sing one verse after another with a completely different vocal line. So the vocals have taken total freedom of expression too.
The rhythm line on Hostile World is like listening to a wild funky bass guitar with drums racing after it, chasing but never really catching it. It’s without a doubt the liveliest song on the album. Look Away calms things down. Look Away is the most compact song of the bunch, so it goes down easier. Wounded ends with the track Missing, which is wound just as tight as the opener Below Zero, so a highly dynamic atmosphere at the start and end of the record is guaranteed. “Wounded” is another successful - mature step forward for the band. Shame the label didn’t give this excellent album more substantial promo support, which it undoubtedly deserved.
Lineup
Ted Leonard – vocals
Phil Bennet – keyboards on tracks #1 and #9
Mike “Benignus” Geimer – keyboards
Douglas A. Ott guitar, keyboards on tracks #1, #4 and #9
Ed Platt – bass guitar
Paul Craddick – drums, additional keyboards on #4
Production
Douglas A. Ott
Tracklist
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 runtime: 63.27
