Tis the season to be spooky and QUAZAR are here to help usher in the spirit of Halloween. The
new duo is comprised of vocalist Anthony Hawkins and PJ Silavwe who is responsible for audio
engineering and instrumentals; they are based in Zambia and South Africa. Their debut single
inspired by the cult Slasher film, Halloween is an embodiment of the gore and sinister nature of
the film. The heavy song tells a story similar to the narrative of Michael Meyer, the song opens
with a conversation between a man and the voices that encourage him to do terrible things that
results in him wanting to go on a murderous rampage, “ No, I’m not weak I will kill them all.”
The lyrical content of the song proceeds to tell the story of an unstable individual with a blood
lust – “There will be no sorrow or pain. Every victim will die in vain.” The song is driven by an
impressive vocal performance by Hawkins and is everything one would expect from a song
found in many Slasher films, it is eerie with booming drums and guitars. There are moments
during this song where one is reminded of a film score as the song changes in tone. There are
industrial elements on the song. The themed single from the QUAZAR studios pair is a solid
effort.
The group can be found on the following social media platforms:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/qzr.studios/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/qzr.studios
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPdMf8r6dLVXw6_jlsnOUAQ
Discord: https://discord.gg/w2bEyPqm
An interview with QUAZAR:
1. What does your band name mean?
The name is a play on a “Quasar” (with an “s”), which is a luminous active galactic nucleus that is powered by a supermassive black hole. We are kind of out there with what we try to create so
we thought “Quazar” was a good fit for our collective. The name is really just a place holder for now since we later found out that there were other creatives going by the same name with the exact spelling.
2. What are your musical inspirations?
Anything from fantasy lore to sci-fi films and cartoons, film scores, black metal and compelling art pieces.
3. What do you feel you have to contribute to the local music industry?
As far as contribution goes, I think that would be ‘out of the box’ approaches on songwriting and attaching world building to music because that is something that we haven’t seen been done by anyone else locally (yet).
4. Will there be any incorporations of traditional Zambian music in any of your music?
Of course. And not only traditional Zambian music, we will incorporate from other different cultures that we appreciate and are inspired by.
5. What are some future aspirations for the band in the next year?
Focusing on creating more engaging art and stories.
6. Are they any local bands you’d like to collaborate with?
Not really on the music side because we are still finding our sound, but we would like to work with 3 South African artists and 1 major very well-known filmmaker – Jono Dry is a graphite artist from Cape Town, he makes the most impressive surreal and photo-realistic graphite art that would synergize with the atmospheric side of our music, Darren Hing is from Cape Town and he is brilliant at texturing/ surface shading and sculpting characters. We also really admire his lighting skills in the 3D world and feel like he can contribute heavily to the atmosphere in our future visual projects. James Ray is also from Cape Town, he is very talented in environmental art and well versed in compositing and bringing an environment to life which would also be really great for future projects. This one is also a little far-fetched but South African filmmaker Niell Blomkamp, director of District 9, Elysium, Chappie and Oats Studio short films. He would be amazing to work with as well as we are very inspired by his work.
7. Please give new fans an idea of what the band sounds like by naming similar acts.
As far as sounding like other artists, I would say a mixture of Humanity’s Last Breath, Celldweller and Code: Pandorum (pre INHUMAN era)
Rating: 7/10
Review and interview by Refiloe Mathelela
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