ENCHANT — Time Lost (review)

ENCHANT — Time Lost album cover Album · 1997 · Metal Related Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Warthur
Enchant's Time Lost can be seen as a companion piece to Wounded - indeed, its most recent rerelease was as part of a remastered 2CD set with Wounded on the other disc. The first four songs, in fact, hail from the Wounded sessions - and the original plan was to just put this out as an EP of those off-cuts - but then the band decided that they may as well also take the opportunity to revisit some of their earliest material which they might not otherwise find a good home for.

As such, the last three songs (Interact, Standing Ground, and Mettle Man) in fact consist of pre-Blueprint of the World material, with Ted Leonard adding in vocals and Ed Platt redoing the bass since the original recordings dated from before they were in the band. One might think that this would result in a confused, disjointed mess, but it ends up working surprisingly well.

Perhaps part of this stems from the nature of the songs cut from Wounded. On that release, the band generally shifted to a somewhat heavier sound, with lots of Dream Theater and Rush influence, compared to their sound on A Blueprint of the World; by comparison, the Wounded off-cuts here are all a bit less prog-metal-ish, and so are a bit closer to the band's neo-prog roots than that release was. This already means that they sit fairly naturally next to the earlier material, which of course would have predated their injection of Dream Theater influence into their sound. (The major touchstone I'd identify for both halves of the album, in fact, would be synth-period Rush.)

As you might expect, the fact that this is an odds-and-ends album does mean that consistency is an issue; in particular, I found Foundations sufficiently uninspiring that I nearly gave up listening partway through it. The other three Wounded off-cuts are decent, but as far as Foundations go... well, the kindest thing I'll say is that the decision to leave it off Wounded showed good and sound judgement on the part of the band.

However, I thought things really perked up with the early tracks - Interact is a ten minute epic which really helps make up for the comparatively simplistic Foundations, and Standing Ground and Mettle Man might be the band's best tributes to the Rush sound to date. With the album ending on such a high, it's easy to forgive a slump in the middle of the running order, and I'd say on average this is actually an improvement on Wounded, which given its disjointed origins is truly impressive.
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