Quick the Word, Sharp the Action is the fourth studio album by British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 based rock band Hundred Reasons

Hundred Reasons

Hundred Reasons are an English rock band from Farnborough, Hampshire, composed of Colin Doran , Larry Hibbitt , Andy Gilmour , Andy Bews and Ben Doyle . Originally, the band was signed to Columbia Records in mid April 2001, after fourteen months of near-constant touring...

, released on 15 October 2007, on V2

V2 Records

V2 Records is a record label that is owned by Universal Music Group as of October 2007. The label was founded in 1996 by Richard Branson, five years after he sold Virgin Records to EMI....

. The album was recorded in Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

, Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

, and is the first to feature guitarist Ben Doyle, following the departure of founding member Paul Townsend in 2006. Quick the Word, Sharp the Action was re-released on 20 April 2009.

The band's official website describes the album as being:

hewn from a particularly bleak period in the band’s history; friends died, a founding member left, Colin was told he might never sing again. It’s the cathartic outpouring of a band going through a heartbreaking time but coming out the other side, stronger, better and smiling all the way.

Re-release

Less than a month after the album's release, V2 Records

V2 Records

V2 Records is a record label that is owned by Universal Music Group as of October 2007. The label was founded in 1996 by Richard Branson, five years after he sold Virgin Records to EMI....

was bought over by Universal, leaving the band, once again, without a label. Because of this, no further singles were released from the record. Planned b-sides for "No Way Back" - "Punctuality's Greatest Enemy" and "The Shredder (Astrocharger Mix)" - were offered free of charge from the band's website.

In January 2008, the band announced plans to buy back the album, and re-release it on another label in May. In August 2008, the band announced that they now own the album, and plan to: "license it so that it might be in shops for more than a fortnight this time round! A Japanese release is in the works and will hopefully precede a tour of said country. Which would obviously be amazing."

The album is due to be re-released on 13 April 2009. The band has stated that it is "re-mastered, re-sequenced and almost re-packaged." The band's management notes that:

the sole reason QTWSTA is being re-issued is because, aside from the people who pre-ordered it, pretty much nobody knew it was out because V2 were bought out within ten days of it being released. The album was in most shops for two weeks, which, for something we'd all spent the best part of 18 months working on, in various ways, seemed a bit of a waste.

Regarding the re-release's bonus tracks, bassist Andy Gilmour states that:

when it came to the extra tracks, we wanted to make it worth people’s while. The first track on there is a song we’d recorded for the Gran Turismo soundtrack, and that’s the only place it’s been for ages. It’s quite an old track, but it’s one that a lot of people are into and interested in - so we thought “we’ll stick that on.” And the other ones are slight variations on other tracks. It’s an eclectic mix, I think.

Colin has said that "The re-release has allowed things to function with more control for the band, so we hope that over time it’s reached our audience. Having a song as a free download on Guitar Hero is helping."

Tracks

1. "Break the Glass" - 3:26
2. "No Way Back" - 3:35
3. "Sick Little Masquerade" - 3:43
4. "Boy" - 3:58
5. "Slipping Away" - 4:16
6. "Pernavas Iela" - 2:07
7. "The Shredder" - 2:35
8. "I'll Never Know" - 3:03
9. "She Is Poison" - 3:29
10. "Opera" - 3:46
11. "Lost for Words" - 3:21
12. "Out of Time" - 3:32

B-Sides

• "Punctuality's Greatest Enemy"
• "The Shredder" (Astrocharger Mix)

Personnel

• Colin Doran - lead vocals
• Larry Hibbit - guitar, vocals (lead vocals: "Break the Glass" and "Opera"), production, mixing
• Andy Bews - drums
• Andy Gilmour - bass
• Ben Doyle - guitar
• Charles Dorman - engineer
• Gatis Zakis - engineer