Slift – Ilion | soundsfromthedarkside

Slift - Ilion

Is Slift’s latest cover art inspired by Admiral Adama eating noodles? Guess we’ll never know, so let’s simply dig into the much anticipated successor of Ummon.

From the depths of space Slift returns to shake things up a bit with their third full-length album called Ilion which is the Greek name for the ancient city of Troy. The Toulouse trio, who have quite a following in alternative circles, signed with Sub Pop Records last year and now have a real chance to reach almost everyone on the planet with their heavy package of SF space rock.

The arduous combination of genres has been one of the things that make Slift a band to keep an eye on since they worked their way up from their garage with the whirling La Planète Inexplorée (2018). After slowly building a following in France Ummon was released in 2020 which caused a hype on the rest of the European mainland. Ummon’s more focused sound was built on heavy doses of acid rock and space metal with some lovely Hendrix inspired melodies swirling in between. Also it comprised a great narrative about Greek Titans leaving earth who built a citadel on a drifting asteroid from which they searched for their creators. Together with the wonderful imagery of Caza, Ummon became our clear winner of that same year. Alas, the pandemic kept Slift from touring the continent and also disturbed the vinyl supply chain, yet it also helped to push the demand for what maybe could be the next big thing in the world of heavy rock music. Jean Fossat, who with his brother Remí and Canek Flores are Slift, said that in this band they can do what they want so let’s check out where Ilion takes us.

The 11-minute opener and title track is made up of different movements and offers many recognizable moments. There’s a lot of loud guitar reverb, warped and interwoven lyrics, spacy keyboard hazes and psych rock squalls. During the final minutes the band cranks up the volume and relentlessly continues this on Nimh. From layered textures we are treated to a story about a spaceship drifting through space, the ‘Nimh’ with its crew of CEO’s who drained Earth’s resources. The crew seeks a new world to exploit but is lost in space forever leaving a barren Earth for the remaining people. So how about that for a metaphor?

Throughout the next hour the saga of destruction continues as characters ponder about lost worlds, mistakes of the past and starting over somewhere else in the galaxy. The band’s ferocity and melodically dense compositions captivate the listener, from pure oblivion of the 12-and-a-half-minute epic The Story That Has Never Been Told to the stretched-out psych of Weavers’ Weft. Ilion probably is best typified by Uruk, a 10 minute track that shifts between the calm and tense, builds and breaks only for the band to kick back in harder than before to close out the track.

Much on Ilion centres around the fall of humanity, still Slift also brings in a glimmer of hope at the end. Or perhaps a fool’s hope, because the tumultuous and harsh nature of the music tones down the message significantly. As the final track, Enter the Loop, begins, the cycle of industrial-strength electronics feels like a relentless reminder that, even if we find somewhere new to live, we’ll inevitably face the same existential questions.

Although the record combines a wide range of hard rock and post rock influences it also brings no new musical vibe to the table when compared to Ummon. Now that the trio is with Sub Pop they logically want to reach the “alternative” masses in the USA. So simply do what you’re good at seems to be the mantra for now. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the risk of being seen as a one-trick pony lies around the corner at the same time.

While to us Ummon is a more adventurous and fun listen, Ilion still is a steamrolling record that starts at the highest peak and maintains its intensity throughout. Despite its overwhelming nature, the furious blend of the psych rock guitar heroics, metal riffs and the epic scale of post-rock is rewarding. Just beware it takes 80 minutes to complete so isn’t designed for short attention spans. Luckily we still have about 11 months to digest it all and see where it stands by then.