ILION

Slift

Released on 19/01/2024 by Sub Pop Records
Main artists: Slift
Genre: Rock

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ILION, the third full-length from French psychedelic prog-metal trio Slift, is a journey. Made up of just eight tracks with average run times mostly around ten minutes each, the music here is dense, powerful, and unrelenting even when it turns down the volume. Slift's sound gradually developed a harder edge as they evolved from the garage rock style of their earliest output to sounds that became more complex and more aggressive by the time of their 2020 sophomore album, Ummon. ILION takes everything up several notches, launching into the outer reaches with overpowering riffing and bloodthirsty drumming on the opening title track. The energy rarely lets up for the song's 11-minute duration, with Slift sprinting from one intricate segment of the track to the next, beginning at full power and pushing the song to its breaking point from there. Even the brief moments of calm are tense, with eerie synthesizer textures breaking up the fuzz assault for a second, only for the band to kick back in harder than before to close out the track. This epic approach simply repeats in different iterations for much of ILION. "Nimh" is a burning, dissonant anthem, and "The Story That Has Never Been Told" spends its 12-plus-minute length moving from a grandiose classic rock-styled synth prog intro to moody Pink Floyd-esque space rock to odd-metered motoric funk grooves, eventually boiling all of these elements over in a metallic meltdown. The pummeling nature of much of this material is balanced out by Slift's cosmic and fantastical tendencies. While not exactly less intense, the space jazz of "Confluence" and the ritualistic air of "Weavers' Weft" emphasize how dynamic and compositional the band can be, especially when not firing on all cylinders at once. ILION is magnificent and overwhelming in the best way. The album isn't designed for short attention spans or playlists but as a holistic experience that rewards committed listening with a mind-blowing sonic saga that rages, challenges, and changes more times than can be counted.

© Fred Thomas /TiVo

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ILION

Slift

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Ilion