By Monk
Just a few weeks ago, the Toulouse rugby team came to our home town and absolutely steamrollered our local heroes Ulster in one of the most monstrously overpowering displays of dominance I have seen in a long time. Well, Slift, hailing from the same French town, could well have provided the soundtrack to that complete and utter destruction as this, their third album, is crushing, dynamic, megalithic, monolithic and dynamically decimating in its ferocity, intensity and sheer unbridled power.
Made up of brothers Jean and Remí Fossat and school friend Canek Flores, it is perhaps inevitable that Slift draw almost immediate comparisons with another trio of frères-du-metal. But, outside of such an interrogatory and perhaps knee-jerk reaction, and apart from the immediate comparator of being hit in the face by a meteorite, just like Gojira there is so much else going on in the grooves of this highly complex blend of progressive psychedelic post-space rock that results in an album that is as cinematic and dramatic as it is insular and claustrophobic, expansive and imprisoning in equal measure.
Taking its name from the ancient Greek word for the city of Troy (hence ‘The Iliad’), ‘Ilios’ is as epic, indeed Homeric , in its feel as its title deserves it to be, it’s eight songs – only one of which clocks in at less than eight-and-a-half minutes – stretching to a magnificently challenging 80 minutes filled with melodic density and dense melodics that enrapture the listener as much as they drive the album’s narrative forward via a eloquent combination of multi-part song structures that make you feel as if you’re being transported, either wilfully or otherwise, on a true sonic and spiritual journey.
Mind-bending, mind-blowing and thought-provoking, Slift have delivered an album possessive of all these qualities.
- ‘Ilion‘ is out now.
- Slift kick off their 2024 tour in Brighton on Saturday 23 February:
- They also play ArcTanGent 10 on Saturday 17 August.
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