Slift – Ilion (Vinyl)

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-rocks 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 Rem 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 rocks 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 years full-length La Planet Inexplore, 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 Rems rolling basslines and Floress relentless skin-pounding. But nothing in their catalog could prepare you for Ilion – a huge and melodically dense record that at once recalls Godspeed! You Black Emperors perpetually uplifting surge, the passionate burn of post-hardcore legends And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Led Zeps psychotic blues-rock mysticism, and the psychedelic swirl of Swedish greats Goat.

But reducing Ilion to a list of reference points would be missing the pointspecifically, that you have to sit down and experience this thing and let it take over your ear space. Over eight tracks and 75+ minutes, Slift unleash the fury with walls of guitar and multi-part song structures that make you feel as if youre being taken on a true journeyfrom the pure oblivion of the title track and the abandon of centerpiece Weavers Weft to the intense climax of the epic The Story That Has Never Been Told.

First pressing on limited “Loser Edition” red coloured vinyl.

Tracklist:
01. Ilion
02. Nimh
03. The Words That Have Never Been Heard
04. Confluence
05. Weavers’ Weft
06. Uruk
07. The Story That Has Never Been Told
08. Enter The Loop