Not to make you feel old or anything, but when post-hardcore icons Quicksand's magnificent debut album Slip came out Amazon was just a rainforest, DVDs hadn't been invented yet and the world was still waiting for the first PlayStation – this last one is a particular shame as Quicksand would have slotted right in on the soundtrack to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.
28 years later Quicksand return with Distant Populations, their fourth full-length and first since 2017's acclaimed comeback Interiors, and by and large, for better or worse,their tracks would still slot right in on the soundtrack to THPS. That's not to say that Distant Populations is just Manic Compression with 2021 production, although this is certainly true of the textured bass-led 'Katakana' and no-nonsense 'The Philosopher'; the band have genuinely retained a lot of what made them great in the first place, even if there is more stomp than thrash these days. The members' days of slamming itdown with frenetic New York hardcore bands like Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today and Burn are more distant than ever, but that just means that the post-hardcore sound they helped set up in the first place has had more time to mature and brew.
The record opens with 'Inversion' and the kind of pounding,bend-at-the-waist riffs which have proven themselves to be timeless, albeit indelibly linked to New York. They form the backbone of the record, cropping up again on the thunderous 'Colossus' and writhing their way through the expansive 'EMDR', but elsewhere there is nuance beyond anything we could have expected in the shape of 'Brushed', a hypnotic acoustic track fleshed out with some electronic elements gelling perfectly, and 'Compacted Reality', a bizarre interlude nobody asked for.
"Sometimes it's better just to keep on travelling" is the refrain on the unexpectedly beautiful 'Phase 90', and that's something the band have really taken to heart – life is a journey and all that, and Quicksand are certainly much further down the road than when they cut their first tracks, but the rest of the world has been on that road too, and they still fit into it at that same slight angle that they always did.
Words - Joe Ponting
Quicksand official