Fire Track: SLIFT – “ILION”

Sub Pop announced the signing of French psychedelic rock outfit SLIFT. The label will release the power-trio’s third full-length, ILION, on CD, 2xLP, and digital/streaming formats on January 19, 2024. The title track from the album can be heard above and is out now on all DSPs.

SLIFT is brothers Jean and Remí Fossat, and Canek Flores. Formed in 2016, SLIFT quickly made an impression on rockers worldwide with their 2017 debut EP, Space Is the Key, and the following year’s full-length La Planeté Inexploreé. In 2019, their KEXP session recorded at the Trans Musicales festival became a viral sensation, racking up more than 1.5 million YouTube views and setting the stage for their acclaimed 2020 space-rock opus and TFN #1 album of the year, UMMON, and a subsequent limited-edition 7” for the Sub Pop Singles Club.

ILION launches SLIFT even deeper into the cosmos, merging the furious intensity of metal and the wigged-out guitar heroics of psych-rock with post-rock’s epic sense of scale. The band offers a window into the album’s concept in this description of the lead single “Ilion”:

“It’s the opening track and the first song we composed for this record. Due to its structure in ‘drawers,’ with different movements, it represents the album as a whole. It depicts monuments to ancient gods rising skyward from the dusty desert floor of a dying planet, battered by fierce winds. It’s about the people condemned to live on this desolate land. And about the murderers of this world, who leave it for space and the hope of a new world, in a frantic crusade which will lead them to madness.”

You can order the album HERE.