lukretion If you have been following Enchant’s career, it is hard to miss the obvious Easter eggs the band have placed on the cover of their 7th full-length album, Tug of War. Images taken from all their previous albums appear in the picture, from the LP A Blueprint of the World LP placed at the feet of the mirror, to the iconic billiard-ball from Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 lying on the floor, to posters of Wounded and Blink of an Eye on the wall. When I first saw it, I wondered whether, by providing such retrospective, the band were trying to subtly tell fans time had arrived for curtain call. I was almost proved right given that after this album Enchant went into hibernation for 11 long years, before making a sporadic comeback in 2014 with the mediocre The Great Divide to then disband once again. So were Enchant planning to send us off on a high note or a low note?

Unfortunately, Tug of War continues the downward trajectory of Enchant’s previous album Blink of an Eye and it is a further step down compared to their best works, 1998’s Break and 2000’s Juggling 9 or Dropping 10. The new material is actually not terribly different from the songs included on those albums, but feels less inspired and less compelling. The album’s core sonic identity is once again a simplified form of progressive rock, where AOR and mainstream pop/rock aesthetics are weaved together with the influences of classic and modern prog greats (Rush, Kansas, Marillion, Spock’s Beard) and reinterpreted with a hint of metallic bite (Dream Theater). Doug Ott’s guitar plays predominantly a soft rhythmic role, with light chords and arpeggios, letting Ed Platt steer the material into more metallic directions with his meaty bass licks. Meanwhile, new keyboard player Bill Jenkins adds minimal texture with sound effects and keyboard chords and drummer Sean Flanegan focuses more on groove than rhythmic extravaganza.

The end result is a layered but unobtrusive texture that leaves a lot of space to singer Ted Leonard’s vocal melodies. Alas, these are not very compelling because they often tend to be slightly too convoluted and rarely have immediate appeal. Partly, this may be due to the songs’ complex harmonic developments, which leave Ted struggling to find good melodies to bridge the unorthodox chord progressions. This has been an unfortunate constant throughout the band’s career, with the exception of Juggling 9 or Dropping 10 which stands as their most accessible and accomplished record to date.

Overall, Tug of War is not a bad record, but it isn’t strong either. It is well played and well arranged, but its greatest drawback is that it dabbles in mostly harmless and generic progressive rock. The listening experience is far from compelling. Very few tracks standout, and they are mostly concentrated at the start (“Sinking Sand”, “Holding the Wind”) or end of the record (the proggy instrumental “Progtology”, “Comatose”), which makes the middle part of the album quite challenging to go through. Longtime fans may still find enough good material to enjoy Tug of War, but if you are new to Enchant, you’d be better served by digging into their earlier – and superior – releases.

Warthur Tug of War would be the last Enchant studio effort before a fairly long hiatus, which would be broken over a decade later by The Great Divide. It's not that they outright split or everything - it's just that they stopped making studio albums, despite having kept up a fairly frequent output over the preceding decade.

Perhaps it was high time for a break; I'd thought the album prior to this, Blink of an Eye, was rather forgettable, in part because the departure of original drummer Paul Craddick meant that the band's pool of songwriters suddenly got shallower, with Douglas Ott and Ted Leonard taking on all the songwriting duties when previously they had been shared between more hands, leading to an album with a rather samey sound.

This time around, other hands contribute more - Ed Platt has some credits, as does new keyboardist Bill Jenkins - but Leonard and Ott still shoulder most of the burden, and it feels like the creative well is running dry here. Whilst it has a few more prog flourishes than Blink of an Eye did, this like that album is often painfully generic at some points, and once again I find myself missing the Rush influences which were more evident on their run of albums from Blueprint of the world to Juggling 9 Or Dropping 10.

Just as Blink of an Eye felt like a rehash of Juggling 9 Or Dropping 10, with just a bit less sonic diversity, so too does Tug of War feel like a rote rehash of Blink of an Eye - again, it's pleasant, but it's not memorable. Maybe the band's earlier works had their shakier aspects, but they at least had more personality than this. Taking a good long break to recharge those creative batteries might be just what the doctor ordered.

ydewata Enchant would surely be my another finding of talented neo-prog band after being a while only focusing to Marillion and Arena. To be honest, 2003’s Tug of War was the album I began with. Much to my surprise, this was another journey to the neo-prog world that I wasn’t expecting to. Well, it has the melodic rhythm and somewhat mellow vocals harmony –which I truly love—as perhaps other neo-proggers out there. What surprised me more was there were elements of (light) progressive metal here and there. Bits and pieces. You hear it through the rhythm guitars parts, keyboards parts, or the time-changes on the drumming pattern.

Opened with a mid-tempo track “Sinking Sand”, I was immediately floored with the melodic vocals harmony and the guitar solo part. Did I mention about the (light) progmet stuff? Yes you can find it in the title-track “Tug of War”. “Hold The Wind” is also another close-to-progmet track. Now even the vocals melody was getting very close to the progmet boundary.

You don’t have to be in a ‘heavy’ mode all the time as “Beautiful” stands out to be a beautiful ballad provided by the band. This is a great record while I have to be honest that “Living In A Movie” is somewhat a filler for me. Other than that, this is a classic output from the band.