Quicksand Return With New Album “Bring On The Psychics”

It’s impossible to overstate the influence that Quicksand have on the hardcore scene. Formed in New York City in 1990 out of the ashes of Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Burn and Bold, the band took the aggression of hardcore and added a more groove-driven crunch to it, unintentionally inventing the genre known today as post-hardcore. After releasing two major-label masterpieces in the Nineties, 1993’s Slip and 1995’s Manic Compression, the band split up at the peak of their powers, only to reunite in 2012 and release Interiors and Distant Populations. Today Quicksand have released their brand new full length, Bring On The Psychics via Equal Vision Records and Rude Records, the album marks an entirely new era for the storied three-piece of Walter Schreifels, Sergio Vega and Alan Cage. Bring On The Psychics serves as the sonic bridge between the band’s heavy and influential Nineties sound and the ambitious, experimental output contained within its more recent era. Produced and mixed by Jon Markson across ten days, Bring On The Psychics once again finds Quicksand reinventing the sound they helped pioneer. Inspired by a quote from scientist Carl Sagan, Bring On The Psychics, Quicksand‘s first album in five years, sees guitarist & vocalist Walter Schreifels examining his past through his present reality. 

From the hook-driven heaviness of the opening Get To It to the shoegaze splendour of Crystallize, the band cover a lot of sonic ground on Bring On The Psychics, but it always sounds like Quicksand. Its technical virtuosity is on full display here as well, from bassist Sergio Vega‘s locked-in bass grooves on Cool Guy to Alan Cage‘s dynamic drumming on the album’s title track. The band also stretched out, musically, on the album as evidenced by the breezy ballad Days You Run To, a song that might even surprise longtime fans. That aspect of the band has never been a secret; anyone who has seen the band’s psychedelic light show can attest to that consciousness-expanding vibe. Bring On The Psychics just sees the band encapsulating their creative vision in a fully, more integrated manner.