Stampede Queen

Its been six years of Sex Drugs & Rock n Roll for Stampede Queen. Incarceration, rehabilitation, a world wide release, member split, national music festivals, international conferences, limos, jets and relocation, video shoots, television spots with a handful of press and new tattoos have all added up to one year of writing and recording their soft more self-titled CD over the Internet. You cant keep a kick ass group down. These forefathers of the New Rock Revival i.e.: Jet, The Darkness, The Living Things and Velvet Revolver have stood the test of time and are on a path of global Rock "n" Roll domination. Look out world and say Hell Yeah to Stampede Queen.
- www.sleazeroxx.com

When a CD from Perris Records crosses your way, then you can already prepare for what will await you: Melodic Rock, Glam Rock or Hard Rock in the style of the Eighties. So far every CD I have heard from them had been in this category and so do American STAMPEDE QUEEN, more precisely Hard Rock. Wait a second, these guys are not American, they are from Calgary, my newly adopted home town, would you look at that!



So will that bring them a bonus, nope, not in the least, even though it might not be the worst thing to happen, but more on that a bit later. The quartet describes its influences as a mix of old AC/DC and KISS, CHEAP TRICK and GUNS N’ROSES, so far so good, the direction is not wrong, but can they at least partly reach their role models? Unfortunately not. Sure, in a genre such as this it is not easy to free yourself from influences and in the case of STAMPEDE QUEEN they most probably did not even try to conceal them, but how far are they stuck in them?



The opener “Never Turn Your Back On Rock’n’Roll“ is a powerful, gripping starter, simple, yet very effective, but unfortunately the following “Woman In A Fast Car“ is a disappointment to my ears, nice to listen to, but nothing more. And these two extremes are the playground the rest of the material moves in as well, they all are energetic, KISS fans will love the voice that is almost an exact replica of Gene Simmons, combined with the earthy and simple songs.



The material is almost perfect for the live environment, one can imagine a smoky club, STAMPEDE QUEEN on the stage, rocking out, the already mentioned opener, “Get Up“ or “Dee Dee Dominator“ rarely have much depth and especially lyrically are extremely clichéd, but the energy makes up for parts of that and a fat Blueser like “Wet Velvet” is a very nice surprise.



One point of criticism I have to come up with, though, is the playing time of 60 minutes. Yes, normally a reviewer rather complains about not getting enough music, but in the case of “A Night At The Cockfight’s“ it is the other way around, because almost an hour is a bit too much for me, as the stylistic path STAMPEDE QUEEN are walking down is rather narrow.



In the end you should like the mentioned bands to potentially like STAMPEDE QUEEN, who does not can forget this quartet, still it is a solid debut. (Online February 15, 2005) - www.metal-observer.com

Canada's Stampede Queen often sounds like Kiss, but the later hasn't sounded this inspired in over a decade. The majority of the albums on my list are rather predictable (I'll always take well executed hard rock over experimental crap), but this one is probably the oddest of them all. Stampede Queen incorporates a healthy dose of humor with their heavy grooves and end up coming across as a talented bar band that just doesn't give a fuck. The type of band that is as proud to play in front of 5 people as 5000.
- http://www.sleazeroxx.com