TUG OF WAR

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. (4.5/5)