When Hum unexpectedly returned last year with the crashing, jarring new album Inlet, it felt like a blessing. Today, we have new material from their fellow heavy-shoegaze oldheads Quicksand. New single “Inversion” is the band’s first material since their 2018 EP Triptych Continuum. It’s just one song, and there’s no telling of whether this signifies more.

The two and a half minute track is piercing throughout with deep, corrosive riffs and Walter Schreifels’ yells. It’s old-fashioned shoegaze, adjacent to post-hardcore or grunge, the instrumentals monotonous but abrasive. “Inversion” was also produced by Will Yip, so the explosive energy is really preserved and clean.

Schreifels says of the track:

The music to “Inversion” was very squatter punk at first. To get something going vocally I started singing in an English Niel Nausea kind of vibe (Nausea are a peace/squatter punk band from the Lower East Side of Manhattan). The lyrics reflect the push and pull of being very connected through technology while at the same time being the most emotionally isolated group of humans to ever walk the planet and fun stuff like that.

“Inversion” was first teased a few days ago on Twitter. This new, pink-laden aesthetic they’ve got going may mean a new era of Quicksand could be coming. And it might be blindingly, weirdly neon.

Listen to “Inversion” below.