Three Quarter Stone hail from the unusually named Guelph in Ontario, Canada. It sounds like a condition you need to rub some cream on. 'Excuse me Doctor, I appear to have a bad case of Guelph'. Still, I live somewhere named after a rubber glove, so I can hardly talk.
The band are Dan Wray - vocals, Chris Drone - guitars, Steve Di Venanzo - guitars, Dave Tonelli - drums and Rob McIntyre - bass. Their sound is a right old mixture of styles and genres. One minute they sound like AC/DC on a freight train, the next like The Beatles taking LSD on a far-distant planet.
In the middle they career through plenty of reference points. The album flits around like a mental patient with a firecracker up his a*se, but never seems to lose control. Although there is little continuity from one track to the next, the result still works. Listening to the record is like eating a chocolate cookie, then a battered shrimp, a plum, a coffee bean and a beetroot all one after the other. As far as bonkers goes, this album could be the definition of the word in a dictionary.
The title track grabs your attention immediately with a high-gain riff and a bout of title chanting. It's a rough and willing track with a grungy persona and muggy, atmospheric production. The chorus is hideously repetitive, but it kind of climbs inside your soul. 'It Don't Matter' has heavy hints of Queens Of The Stone Age creeping through its veins. I could imagine hearing it on trendy rock radio station. It has a very charty vibe, although you couldn't begin to describe the song as a sellout to commerciality.
Listening to the comb-kazoo fighting the slide guitar in 'Wasted Time' makes my lips tingle. I've always hated playing those tickle-inducing vibro-instruments, so it's good to hear someone else taking the punishment. Still, it's an interesting addition to the album and has a broad bluegrass feel, totally at odds with the two previous tracks.
'Broken' is a properly weird song that's more spaced out than two pine trees ten kilometres apart. For whatever reason, it sounds great. I haven't tried living the life of a hippie, but I'd imagine 'Broken' would act as the perfect soundtrack - somebody get me some sandals and a dashiki! 'Ride It Hard' is a track which majors on the modernistic. It's a highly contemporary song which, like 'It Don't Matter', offers plenty of chart-bothering potential.
'Tough Times' has a 60's groove to the music and a 70's taste to the lyrics. It sounds like Lennon and McCartney collaborating with Pink Floyd on a track for a Vietnam war film. It's arguably the best track on the album and has bags of epic-soundtrack DNA in its blood. The final track is an acoustic cover of 'Broken'. It's even more hippie-ish than the full version.
Bullet With A Name starts as one thing and ends as something else. If you can live with the genre-crossing, this is a release with some extraordinary moments on it. As an album it is possibly a touch too mentalist. As individual songs to whack in a play list, there's something for everyone here.
Check out... That comb-kazoo.
Overall Score 94%
www.rockrealms.com/archive/t/tqs_bwan.php
                            Read more...
                        

                            
Three Quarter Stone
Bullet With A Name
Label: Self Released
By: Alex Young
Bullet With A Name is the second album by Guelph Ontario’s hard rock heroes Three Quarter Stone, following their release of It Starts Right Here… in 2006.  For fans of brutal biker-rock like Godsmack, or the drop-tuned aggression of Down, Three Quarter Stone’s new record is a bullet with your name written all over it. The band doesn’t pull any punches and relentlessly pounds out songs that could easily be the soundtrack to long nights spent inside bottles of Jack Daniels and at the end of lit cigarettes. Any questions about their rock n’ roll credentials get crushed immediately after seeing the naked woman on the back of an album, holding a pistol and wearing nothing but panties and black leather boots.
The album was mastered by Justin Shturtz at Sterling Sound Studios from the mean streets of New York City. After hearing the band build the ground work for their sound with tracks like ‘Devil Woman’ and ‘Killed Last’ from their first album, Shturtz has managed to craft the band’s raw garage rock into an unforgiving album. Lead singer Dan Wray howls like a dog in heat while spinning tales of badass babes (‘You Are the One’) and having the balls to be yourself (‘Believe’). ‘Waste of Time’ is a southern blues bloodbath that carves out the attitude of a band that doesn’t have the time to worry about what anyone thinks except themselves. The blistering solo heard on the song ‘It Don’t Matter’ manages to put the crushing power of Metallica up against all the strut and swagger that could be found on early albums by the Rolling Stones. 
Although Three Quarter Stone has powerful choruses and pounding drums that swing in like a sledge hammer, the band seemingly understands how to craft a swooning ballad. The one song on the record that drives this point home harder than a hollow point shell through someone’s skull, is the slow sway found on ‘I Don’t Need’. This song comes complete with tasteful guitar solos and dirty distortion in a few spots, but overall it really slows their sound down by strumming acoustic guitars and even sees them playing along with a string section. Lead singer Dan Wray shines darker and deeper on ‘I Don’t Need’ than he does on almost every other track on the disc. Wray sings “I don’t need for you to hold my hand/I don’t need for you to understand/What I like, to have you here with me/the comfort of a friend in my time of misery” overtop of a powerful arrangement. The band fuses their sound with a symphonic synergy that makes the violins and cellos sound like a marriage made between heaven and hell.
Although Three Quarter Stone has a long way to go before they reach the top of the charts, it’s clear that these Canadian rock titans are well on their way to seeing success shine on them. After honing the songwriting skills from their last album, it wouldn’t be surprising to see these guys on a tour across Canada some time soon. In the meantime, Bullet with a Name has songs that you could hear in the foreseeable future in tattoo parlors and strip clubs across the nation. Lemmy would be proud, boys.
                            Read more...