ALTAR Q

Unlike many young bands, Altar Q embraces the music their parents listened to and it is this influence that comes to the surface in their sound and songwriting. Lead guitarist Mike Massa’s father played drums and guitar when Mike was a child and later gave his prize custom Les Paul to Mike when he started his band.
Singer and rhythm guitarist Trey Cutrell says at first he did not understand why his dad listened to Pink Floyd and
watched the TV on mute. Now he knows and he enjoyed going through his father’s vinyl collection of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Beatles and Elton John....
They proudly categorize their music as “old school hard rock” and it is an apt description. The music is energetic guitar-driven rock with a nod toward their classic rock influences, but
delivered with more of the modern approach of bands like Stone Temple Pilots or Pearl Jam.
It is clear Massa spent long hours developing his guitar chops over the years. The guitar playing on this disc
ranks with the best I’ve heard from any Richmond band and is certainly better than some guitarists on Rolling Stones’“Top 100 Guitarists of All Time” list.
The guitar parts in “Waiting for You” perfectly bring out the emotion of the song, washed in overdrive, delay and
some wah-wah. Throughout the CD there are cool, crunchy, distorted riffs and wailing solos.
Shawn P Terry’s bass lines add extra punch to a couple of songs that already have the drive of a freight train. The rhythm section of Terry and Robert Tredway provide the perfect playground for Massa’s guitar attack...... In describing the songwriting process, Massa said, “Every
member writes for the band. We record every song we write, then we play them
for awhile and let them take their natural course and see if they change for better
or worse......
— Mortimer McWilliams
- RICHMOND MUSIC JOURNAL

Because I read the lyrics while I listened to Altar Q, it turned typical indecipherable skinhead hard-core into an interwoven tapestry of poetry and sound, a stunning amalgam of thoughtprovoking words and driving rhythms.
The insightful, socially conscious themes wander through the cacophony of our cultural fears and fallacies. They touch as lightly as a stiletto through flesh across topics like child abuse, the recent sniper attacks, sacrificing people in war, death and destruction.
The melodies are contorted around a misshapen construct of words and phrases. They rhyme the unrhymable and turn stiff dogma of diction into flowing cascades of images and emotion.
Like Tull’s “Ulysses,” it’s as big as an opera and as small as a hope.
-- Robert Stutler - Richmond Music Journal