Ilion

Description

With their third album, the Toulouse psychedelic rock band SLIFT makes their Sub Pop debut. ILION continues and concludes the intergalactic sci-fi narrative that began on SLIFT's acclaimed 2020 album, UMMON, and continued on the 2021 Sub Pop Singles Club. Recorded live in Haw River by Jelle Kuiper, Iron & Wine's sound engineer. SLIFT's ILION is a gargantuan work of rock music, a record that starts at the highest level and never lets up. If that sounds excessive, rest assured that with the Toulouse trio, you are in good hands. Their third album is massive and oceanic, fusing the furious intensity of metal and the heroic guitars of psych rock with the epic scope of post-rock. ILION is the kind of music you listen to and think, "Is this really the work of only three people?" It is indeed, and SLIFT's sheer ferocity is much more than a storm in a teacup. It stretches for miles, carving new zeniths in rock's unforeseen horizons. SLIFT is comprised of brothers Jean and Remi Fossat, and Canek Flores, who met the Fossat brothers at school. The band formed in 2016 and quickly produced their first EP in 2017, Space Is the Key, which fused the heaviness of stoner rock with the sugary qualities of garage rock. From there, things got even stranger: The trio experimented with faster tempos and bongos (!!) on the following year's album La Planète Inexplorée, and in 2019, their KEXP session recorded at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes became a viral sensation, accumulating over 1.4 million views on YouTube. UMMON, released in 2020, represents SLIFT's pivot towards the celestially crushing confines of psych-metal, marked by Remi's rolling bass lines and Flores' relentless drumming. But nothing in their catalog could prepare you for ILION, a huge and melodically dense record reminiscent of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, the passionate burn of post-hardcore legends ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, the psychotic blues-rock mysticism of Led Zep, and the psychedelic whirlwind of Sweden's great Goat.