Six years have passed since Toulouse’s SLIFT released their debut album, Ummon, and became celebrated for their hard-hitting and distinctive sound. Now, they’re back with their third record, Fantasia, released via Sub Pop Records.
Where their 2024 release, ILION, found its musings in Greek mythology, their newest conceptual offering sees the French trio exercise their right to narrate their outlook on the world. With the album’s lyrics deeply inspired by author Jorge Luis Borges, whose fiction is known for weaving magic and surreality into settings that feel almost tangible, Fantasia is an album that finds itself battling with the supernatural against the hard truths of the modern day.
If the hallmark of a strong album lies in its opener, then Fantasia is one that promises a strong performance from start to finish. Commencing Fantasia comes the title-track, a haunting yet glimmering nine-minute preamble in which one half of the band’s brothership, Jean Fossat, screams of his deepest desires: “one love, for the world”. But what comes after the album’s first cut isn’t any less arresting.
An album tied to feelings of disillusionment with the status quo, “The Village” is where this theme comes to life. Steered by anger-fuelled chants that cut to the heart of the xenophobia and otherness corroding political discourse (“Every single day they call me the stranger / At the well they say I poisoned the water”), the track cuts through as the most nuanced and moving on the record.
Packed full of impressive solos (“Corrupted Sky”) and moreish Sabbath-esque riffs (“The Day of Execution”), the finished article silences any doubt that songs of such scale could hold together this tightly. Recorded in the enormous live room at Belgium’s Daft Studios, each track feels lean, agile, and coherent, standing as strongly together as they do apart; a testament to the band’s chemistry, innate cohesion, and individual talents.
With every track but one on Fantasia exceeding the five minute mark, SLIFT don’t entirely stray from the extended runtimes that have defined their discography to-date, giving each track its own lengthy, cinematic allure and narrative pull. Though Fossat’s vocals are occasionally swallowed by the sheer force of the band’s enraged instrumentation, it rarely feels accidental – soon tempered by sonic glimpses of utopia, as in the luminous intro to closing track “Secret Mirror”.
Ultimately, Fantasia stands tall as a 50 minute odyssey of loud, heavy, and turbulent movements that mirror the socio-political climate we find ourselves in, finding SLIFT at their most beguiling and culturally relevant yet.
With a four-date UK tour planned for the end of the year, this feels like SLIFT’s time. And if you’ve not come across them before now, Fantasia serves as the perfect introduction.