Release Date: 19th January 2024
"SLIFT’s ‘ILION’ is a towering work of rock music, a steamrolling record that starts at the highest peak and never lets up. If that sounds overwhelming, trust that this Toulouse trio have you in good hands. Their third full-length feels massive and oceanic, merging the furious intensity of metal and the wigged-out guitar heroics of psych rock with post-rock’s epic sense of scale. ‘ILION’ is the kind of music where you listen to it and think to yourself, “This came from only three people?” It sure did, and SLIFT’s utter ferocity is way more than a tempest in a teacup. It reaches outwards for miles and creates new zeniths within unforeseen horizons of rock. SLIFT is made up of brothers Jean and Remí Fossat and Canek Flores, who first met the brothers Fossat at school. After the band formed in 2016, they quickly made their 2017 debut EP, ‘Space Is the Key’, which merged stoner rock’s heaviness with the sugar-rush qualities of garage rock. From there, things only got weirder: The trio experimented with faster tempos and bongos on the following year’s full-length, ‘La Planeté Inexploreé’ and, in 2019, their KEXP session recorded at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes became a viral sensation, racking up more than 1.4 million YouTube views. ‘UMMON’ from 2020 represented SLIFT’s pivot towards the celestially crushing confines of psych-metal, marked by Remí’s rolling basslines and Flores’s relentless skin-pounding. But nothing in their catalogue could prepare you for ‘ILION’, a huge and melodically dense record that at once recalls Godspeed! You Black Emperor’s perpetually uplifting surge, the passionate burn of post-hardcore legends …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Led Zeppelin’s psychotic blues-rock mysticism, and the psychedelic swirl of Swedish greats Goat."
