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Quasar.
 Named after one of the most mysterious and fascinating objects known to modern astronomy - an extremely bright and energetic star-like body located many billions of light years away - Quasar is a local metal band that has been around for a few years, yet which only made its live debut this August.
"Quasar started as a side-project of mine - or, rather, a solo project I guess you could say - which just sort of evolved into the live entity that it is at the moment," explains guitarist and vocalist Barrath.
"For quite a few years, it was just sitting in the back lot of my mind, so to speak, waiting for its moment to be realised. Now seemed like the perfect time because we're recording a ten-track album, but decided that we needed to take the music out there first, so that people get to know us before the album comes out. Qazim, the drummer, and I have been working together since 2002, and we got our bassist, DMT-2K5, in August this year."
As for the band's name, "that was just something I came across one day", Barrath recalls. "When I found out what it meant, I felt it was actually quite fitting for the project because our material deals with things like lost civilisations, the development of man, and the cosmos, while the word "quasar" sounds a bit spacey and also has ancient connotations. It's a mysterious name for a mysterious project."
Rather fittingly, Barrath has an interest in astronomy - although he admits that it's a subject he's really only gotten into within the last decade or so.
"I didn't really have it when I was in high school or anything like that," he says. "It sort of came about when I got bored of a lot of other stuff I'd been interested in, so went looking for something else to absorb myself in. I mean, most people don't go through life only being interested in one thing; you develop different interests that you dedicate varying amounts of time to. I suppose I've always had some interest in astronomy, but it's only been within the last few years that I've been buying books on the subject and really reading up on it. I remember seeing Halley's Comet as a kid - that was an early thing that inspired me; I had a telescope at the time - and being interested in stuff like that then, but it was something that was sort of put on hold during my teenage years."
At Quasar's debut performance, the band wore rather unusual stage attire in the form of shirts, ties and other dressy items of clothing, something that they've apparently done at subsequent shows too.
"That's basically us trying to adopt a bit of an individualist approach in the metal scene around here," Barrath explains. "We vary the look a bit depending on the sort of show we'll be playing because we've started to develop two distinct sets of music. We've got a heavier, more brutal set, as well as a trippier one, so we might adopt a different appearance for each of those in order to reflect the different feelings that they're going to evoke. Obviously, if you've got a pretty straightforward heavy set, the mood during that's going to be different from that during a set of more gentlemanly, intellectual metal: the doomy, trippy, psychedelic stuff."
On the subject of psychedelic music, it turns out that this has been a significant influence in the band's material.
"We've been influenced by a lot of progressive '70s stuff," reveals DMT. "Bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath: that classic sort of sound. I guess you could say that that's my affinity to the music, the connection I feel to it, because I'm not originally from a metal background. I also play in a band called End Of September; I do guitar in that. Both bands actually did a small show together not that long ago up in the Hills; which is where we all come from, by the way."
As mentioned earlier, the band are recording a full-length album, but have decided to put a three-track promo, 'Eternal Ancient Rhythms' out first, to give people something of a taste of Quasar's material, and hopefully whet their appetites for more.
"The promo came about as a result of the recording for the album," Qazim confirms. "Common sense dictated that we should have a promo or a demo of some kind out first, so we decided to make the 'Eternal Ancient Rhythms' promo, which will be three songs lifted off the album. The album versions will probably come out slightly differently - a bit more instrumentation, extra vocals, that sort of thing - but they're largely done right now, so the promo will give people a good idea of what they'll sound like."
James Brazel
 | Quasar launch 'Eternal Ancient Rhythms' at an all-ages show at the Lizard Lounge on Sat 17 Dec with Synnove, Juggermath, Blood Mason and Hatred Slave. |
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