There are some bands that remain underrated throughout their career despite consistently releasing great albums. They keep plugging away although they are being largely ignored and maybe as a reaction to this lack of attention, they produce brilliant results. Up until now Hundred Reasons has been one of these bands. Apart from a short stint of media interest in them and their excellent debut release
Ideas Above Our Station they haven’t exactly been on people’s radars during their existence so far. Since then they have released two more albums –
Shatterproof Is Not A Challenge and
Kill Your Own, both of which where just as good as, if not better than their 2001 debut. Despite the high standard that they were reaching the public remained uninterested, and with their latest release they will probably still show a lack of interest. While this was a shame with their first three albums, this is certainly not a shame here.
Quick The Word, Sharp The Action is simply one of 2007’s most disappointing albums, especially considering the potential the band showed on their other albums. This is the album where Hundred Reasons end their streak of releasing consistently good albums.
What makes the album even more disappointing is that the first single –
‘No Way Back’ is actually very good. Sure, it is the poppiest song that they have ever done, but it is still an excellent rock song. With an excellent sense of melody and a chorus that begs to be sung along with, it was a natural choice for the single. However, it is not perfect. Its negative aspects are actually common to the album as a whole. It is very one-dimensional, and a little too restrained at times. The album is actually very restrained all the way through. This makes it the poppiest album they have released to date. While poppy is not necessarily bad, it is bad when it is as bland, inoffensive as this. The closest to post-hardcore (which HR mixed with rock in the past, with outstanding results) that QtWStA gets is
‘The Shredder’. The title is enough to make the listener very apprehensive as it implies poor, faux-metal – and that is a very good estimate of what the song is! The vocals are distorted and are so low in the mix that they are rendered inaudible throughout. This makes the guitar riff the focal point of the song. It is too bad that it doesn’t change at all, and it is one of the most boring songs on the album.
The musicality shown by the band has never been staggering, but this has never really mattered too much because their songwriting skills more than made up for this. Before, they improved the music even further by pouring out tonnes of passion into it. On this album though, they more-or-less stop halfway with both the effort put into song writing and the passion put into it. A good example of this is the opener
‘Break the Glass’ . The idea of a creepy sounding, minor key piano riff leading into a rock song may have been done countless times before but has been known to work to fantastic effect. Unfortunately, the piano work here sounds uninspired, as is the rock song following this short intro. The song as a whole is fairly lifeless and this is overwhelmingly disappointing. Even more lifeless is
‘She Is Poison’, a song that would fit perfectly into a bad primary school standard Christmas play, in both style and quality. While the songs that were intended to rock harder are on the whole very poor, the softer songs are actually pretty good. In the middle of the album is a short instrumental called
‘Pernavas Iela’ – it is a welcome departure from the bland pop-rock that surrounds it. It is a soothing, relaxing break made up of a short, repeated guitar motif with the sounds of distant conversation and some kind of xylophone/marimba instrument which adds to the ambient feel of it.
It was unlikely to begin with that
Quick the Word, Sharp the Action would gain Hundred Reasons any popularity, and given the sudden drop in quality shown here they are fairly undeserving of any that might come their way. Their back catalogue before this stands head and shoulders above this album, which is essentially an extremely toned down version of their previous albums. However, this may be a good thing for them commercially as it is far more digestible for fans of pop and pop-rock (the mainstream). But for the fans who have stood by them through thick and thin, this is an overwhelming disappointment. It is very bland, uninspired and lifeless and this obviously does not make for a good listen at all. This gets my vote for biggest disappointment of the year.
