lukretion It took US prog rockers Enchant a couple of albums to find a unique sound and direction. Their 4th full-length Break is where things finally started falling into place, after three slightly more derivative albums, inspired initially by neoprogressive rock (Marillion) and later by prog metal in the vein of Dream Theater. On Break, Enchant seem to have metabolized both of those influences to arrive at a more personal sound, halfway between progressive rock, prog metal and AOR / mainstream rock.

The album brims with the type of highly-proficient playing and glossy, sophisticated arrangements that you would expect to find on a prog rock record. All songs feature intricate but elegant interplays between guitars, keyboards and bass – the latter frequently also playing a prominent melodic role, which may draw parallels to Rush. The musicians’ technical level is very high, but they never get carried away with excessive, showy noodling, but they instead always play to the song. The harmonic structures are complex, often veering towards jazz territory. Paul Craddick’s drumming is classy and imaginative and at times reminiscent of Rush’s drummer Neil Peart. The production is polished and airy, which allows to appreciate the nuances of the musicians’ playing (though it may lack a bit of bite when things get sonically heated).

While the arrangements are complex and layered, structurally the songs are much more straightforward, generally following a standard verse-chorus format, with occasional digressions in the form of bridges or instrumental breaks. The linear structures are a nudge towards radio-friendly rock, which one can also find in the highly melodic vocal lines. Singer Ted Leonard interprets the vocal melodies soulfully with his pristine, powerful voice, at times reminiscent of Steve Walsh (Kansas). This balance between complex progginess and radio-friendly accessibility is a distinctive characteristics of Enchant’s sound throughout their career, and it is the reason why sometimes they are described as a “soft progressive rock” band.

The melodies are however one of my main gripes with Break. They generally possess an elusive quality that rarely makes them overtly catchy – certainly nothing even remotely close to what one would call an “earworm”. Generally, this may not be a bad thing, since staying clear of cheap ear-candy often improves the repeated listening value of an album. However, things start to get complicated if even after listening to the album several times, one cannot still remember a single vocal line from the record. I am perhaps exaggerating here, since songs like “King”, “My Enemy”, “The Lizard” and “My Gavel Hand” do leave a mark on the listener. The other songs, however, are much less accessible and memorable, and flow away almost unnoticed. This effect is accentuated by the fact that many songs are quite similar to one another in terms of structure, tempo and mood, so they tend to blend together somewhat, especially between “Defenseless” and “Silence”.

All in all and despite the generally high quality of the material, many of the tracks included in this album fall short of making a big impact on the listener. I do not think it is by accident that only two songs from Break (the title-track and “My Enemy”) will eventually be included in the double-disc live album Enchant will release a few years later. Having said that, Break remains a quality record, full of classy playing, intelligent arrangements and a handful of excellent song too (“My Enemy” is truly splendid).

Warthur Enchant started out on A Blueprint of the World with a neo-prog sound reminiscent of Marillion, IQ, and Jadis, before moving to a sound on Wounded which was more reminiscent of Dream Theater. (A certain Rush appreciation would be the common thread between these styles.)

Their third album, Time Lost, would consist of off-cuts from the Wounded sessions and material from their early years; whilst I thought it was good, and in fact a bit more consistent than Wounded, it also didn't really push their sound forwards (quite the reverse, in fact).

By comparison, Break finds them shifting their sound still further. The neo-prog stylings of their early years are now obscured. Dream Theater is still a detectable influence, but they've steered back from the outright imitation which Wounded threatened to descend into. Filling the gap is an injection of modern melodic hard rock - the sort of thing which lingers on the borderlands of metal without crossing over entirely - but executed with prog sensibilities when it comes to song structures and execution.

Just as Wounded/Time Lost would see them supporting Dream Theater on tour, Break would give the band the opportunity to support the likes of Spock's Beard and Marillion. This is an apt pairing - because all three bands started out in a retro-prog or neo-prog style but would all end up by the late 1990s evolving in a direction where, whilst prog was still an essential component of their sound, they were also unafraid to blend it with much more modern styles and techniques - particularly from indie rock or alt-rock - to offer something new.

The parallels in terms of overall approach would be a big clue to the sort of underlying compatibility of musical philosophy which would lead to Ted Leonard joining Spock's Beard as their new lead vocalist over a decade later. At the same time, with each band selecting different aspects of the prog past to call on and different aspects of present-day music to incorporate, their execution of that overall strategy varied. In Enchant's case, they show a remarkable versatility; Douglas Ott's lead guitar work can go from Steve Rothery-esque soloing to alt-metal shrieking and back again in the course of a single song, for instance.

Once again, Rush seems to be a regular touchstone, with pieces like Surrounded sounding a bit like they could come from a mid-to-late 1990s Rush album - though at this point, it's harder to say who is the influencer and who is the influenced, because of course Rush were actively making records with this sort of sound right at the same time as Enchant were.

Whether all this works for you will depend on whether you feel like the neo-prog revivalism of Enchant's early years was the thing which was truly interesting about them, or whether the idea of a radically updated and reconfigured Enchant sound appeals to you. If you were here for the sound of A Blueprint of the World and were unsure of the shift in direction on Wounded, you might struggle with this one, especially if 1990s melodic hard/alt-rock doesn't appeal.

On the other hand, if you like the sort of influences that Enchant introduce into their music here, then you might find that this is just what the doctor ordered - a golden opportunity for Enchant to truly carve out their own distinct sound which adds up to more than merely the sum of their influences. I'm very much in their latter school - as fond as I am of their early work, I think Break might have been the album which they truly needed to produce at this point in their career, a release which allowed them to forge their own musical identity.