The cover isn’t much to look at, and the press release isn’t exactly inspiring either. It boasts that Dominic Lamarre, the Canadian dude – or one-man musical army, as he puts it – behind Supermassive Quazar, recorded over 250 songs before his 33rd birthday. Fine, but quality beats quantity any day. Worst of all, the title made me think of Muse. I much prefer not to think about Muse. Thankfully, despite the awkwardly pretentious moniker, Lamarre isn’t attempting to emulate the overblown Devonshire space-proggers.
That isn’t to say there’s nothing proggy to be found on SQ’s eponymous second album: instrumental opener ‘If You Read This, It Means I’m Already Dead’ – is proggy in the God Machine sense – but it’s disappointingly underproduced in relation to its expansive ambitions. However, the production style works altogether better for the driving rock of ‘The X’ which immediately follows, before Lamarre begins veering off on poppier tangents.
The first of these, ‘Voyeur’s Song’, is Weezer-like in its poppy grunge-lite stylings, while ‘Sex Machine’ borders on Rasmus style rock pop, the beat and polished female vocals overtly dance of a chart nature in feel. ‘Numen’ is marred by some cheesy synths and the fact some of the vocal melody is lifted from ‘Hey Big Spender’. Elsewhere, ‘Star-Crossed Lovers;’ is just awful and the less said about it the better. On the other hand, ‘Trapped’ seems to take its lead from late 80s Ministry (think ‘Stigmata’) only with a more organic, less mechanised feel. If that makes sense. Meanwhile, ‘Thief’ is super-chunky with a broad hint of 90s rock about it: think Filter without the rage, perhaps.
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Throughout the album, SQ alternate the poppier tunes and blazing rockers, the rather weak ‘Look Inside’ contrasting with the spiky punk of ‘You Look Good in that Dress’. Not all of it really works, and this 13-track release would have been punchier and maintained a higher standard if it had been cut to nine or ten tracks. Still, it’s more fair than middling, though I doubt SQ will go supernova any time soon.
Supermassive Quazar Online
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