Is what people call shoegaze nowadays really just post-hardcore with more distortion pedals behind it? That’s the question we need to start asking ourselves when it comes to a band like the rising San Francisco trio midrift.

Having already achieved Tik Tok virality behind two of their earliest singles, it’s not entirely surprising how descriptors get so blurred in a super-saturated, music-flattening day and age where everything with an ounce of feedback behind gets the ‘gazer tag. The band currently being on the road opening for two bands with sonic dualities themselves in Fleshwater and julie isn’t helping beat the allegations, but they also just wrapped up a tour with hardcore experimentalists Angel Du$t as well.

“over anything” — the lead single from the band’s debut album, silhouette — at the very least sounds like a heavy, distortion- deluged of melodic hardcore swerving in and out of a similar lane as shoegaze-adjacent post-hardcore bands like Title Fight and Basement. But let’s not get caught up in labeling the young band into a box. What’s here are some power-packed riffs with an explosive, emotive chorus that makes its own meaning with whoever beholds it. Whatever you want to call it, it’s heads above most other alt-rock music blending itself into wallpaper nowadays.

Directed by: Karl Perkins

midrift’s Silhouette will be self-released June 5th.