French heavy rock band SLIFT is releasing Fantasia, their incredible new album, worldwide from Sub Pop today, Friday, June 5th. To celebrate the release, the band is sharing a new lyric video for the album’s title track, directed by Edd Carr (Deftones’ “cut hands” visualizer), featuring cyanotype imagery of a wide variety of winged insects.

SLIFT says of the visual, “‘Fantasia’ is a song that expresses the power to rise above pain through love and a deep connection with the world around us.”
 
SLIFT’s previously announced tour in support of Fantasia resumes tonight, Friday, June 5th, in Tampere, FI at the Ankea Festival, and runs through Saturday, February 6th, 2027 in Madrid, ES at Wolf. The tour includes extensive dates in North America, the UK, and the EU between now and early 2027.
 
Tickets for all shows are on sale now. Please find a full list of dates below.
 

 
SLIFT’s Fantasia was produced by the band at Daft Studios in Brussels, Belgium, mixed by Kurt Ballou at GodCity Studio in Salem, Massachusetts, and mastered by Magnus Lindberg at Vrtkl Audio in Stockholm, Sweden. Fantasia features the aforementioned title track, “The Day of Execution,” and “A Storm of Wings.”
 
Fantasia is now available on CD/2xLP/Digitally worldwide from Sub Pop. 2xLP orders in North America through megamart.subpop.com, in the UK/EU from Mega Mart Europe, and the band’s live shows will receive the limited Loser Edition on Mustard Yellow (North America) and Sparkle Starlight (UK/EU) colored vinyl. The limited Loser Editions will also be available at your local record store while supplies last.
 
Read more about SLIFT’s Fantasia here.
 

A moth knight descends the endless steps of “Fantasia” in the new animated lyric video for SLIFT’s pummeling epic “The Day of Execution,” directed by Ben Amos Cooper. The song is from the French heavy psychedelic rock group’s forthcoming album Fantasia.

SLIFT says of the song and visual, “’The Day Of Execution’ is about the effect of time passing on each and every one of us, and about memory loss. It portrays the nostalgia that creeps into us as time goes by. Fantasia is such an ancient city that it no longer remembers itself, and this gradually alienates its inhabitants.”
 
SLIFT is also sharing new headlining dates in North America, the UK, and the EU for the fall of 2026 and early 2027 in support of Fantasia. The new dates begin Tuesday, October 6th, 2026 in Boston, MA at the Sinclair and run through Saturday, February 6th, 2027 in Madrid, ES at Wolf.
 
The North American dates run from October 6th-24th, and include stops in New York, DC, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, Denver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
 
The 2026 UK/EU leg runs November 17th-December 13th and will include stops in France (Ramonville-Saint-Agne, La Rochelle, Nantes, Rennes, Villeurbanne, Strasbourg, Lille), the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Groningen), Germany (Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin), Czech Republic (Prague), Italy (Milan), Belgium (Brussels), Switzerland (Zurich), Ireland (Dublin), and UK (Manchester, Bristol, Nottingham, and London).
 
SLIFT’s early 2027 shows will run February 3rd-5th and include stops in Portugal (Porto, Lisbon) and Spain (Barcelona).
 
SLIFT’s previously announced European 2026 touring resumes this Thursday, May 7th, in Copenhagen, DK at A Colossal Weekend Festival, and runs through Saturday, August 15th in Carhaix, FR at Motocultor Festival.
 
Tickets for all shows are on sale now. Please find a full list of dates below.
 

The exhilarating French heavy psychedelic rock band SLIFT is returning with Fantasia, their new album, available Friday, June 6th, 2026 worldwide from Sub Pop. The longplayer was produced by the band at Daft Studios in Brussels, Belgium, mixed by Kurt Ballou at GodCity Studio in Salem, Massachusetts, and mastered by Magnus Lindberg at Vrtkl Audio in Stockholm, Sweden. Fantasia features the highlights “The Day of Execution,” the title track, and today’s offering, the soaring “A Storm of Wings”
 
Fantasia is now available for preorder on CD/2xLP/Digitally worldwide from Sub Pop. 2xLP preorders in North America through megamart.subpop.com and in the UK/EU from Mega Mart Europe will receive the limited Loser Edition on Mustard Yellow (North America) and Sparkle Starlight (UK/EU) colored vinyl. The limited Loser Editions will also be available at your local record store while supplies last.
 
SLIFT’s previously announced European tour schedule for the Spring and Summer of 2026 resumes Thursday, April 16th in Bourges, FR at Printemps du Bourges, and runs through Saturday, August 15th in Carhaix, FR at Motocultor Festival. New headlining dates for North America and Europe for 2026 will be announced soon.
 

In the technical sense, every previous album by the radiant and heavy French trio SLIFT has been a fantasia—a composite of genres and forms that allowed the band to improvise, to jam on themes until they seemed to spiral together into space. Their acclaimed third album, 2024’s Ilion, was a sci-fi story built with 10- to 13-minute exploratory escapades, often starting with doom metal or stoner rock before spinning freely into glorious instrumental oblivion. But, in a bit of intentional irony, SLIFT’s fourth album is actually called Fantasia. It’s their leanest and most direct record to date; taken together, its eight songs clock in at less than 50 minutes. It is also their most riveting album yet, a pointed saga about overcoming international upheaval delivered by a band bearing down, not wasting a single second in the process.
 
They wanted to write and render songs that recognized the turmoil of these days and to sing of a more hopeful vision, of a time when a reckoning arrives. SLIFT didn’t want to lose the message by playing too much. To wit, the longest song on Fantasia is the opening title track, a nine-minute preamble in which Jean Fossat screams of his desires for the world: rising above our pain, burying our dread, and finding, individually and collectively, “a fire for your soul.” The songs that follow aren’t lacking the complexity or intensity that have made SLIFT a rising, radical star in heavy music; it’s simply that they’ve found new ways to weave the complexities of their past inside every piece, like a tapestry that reveals a new layer every time you look. In doing so, they offer an affirming and urgent message: Together, we can still change the times in which we live.
 
Though only Jean and bassist Rémi Fossat are related, SLIFT is essentially a band of brothers. They’ve been friends with drummer Canek Flores since high school, and 2026 marks a decade together in this trio. They rehearse with religious regularity in a basement in the countryside near Toulouse, inside the jam room where they’ve long indulged their propensity for longform wonder. But they built the songs of Fantasia differently. Jean started many of the songs by himself, then quickly brought them to basement rehearsals with a clear and concise idea of how he imagined them taking shape. At first, SLIFT struggled to keep the songs tight, old habits making them wonder if this song or that one shouldn’t break the double-digit threshold. By the time they crossed France’s northern border into Belgium to record in the enormous live room at Daft Studios, though, the songs were lean, agile, and punchy. They made most of them in a single take.
 
As Jean Fossat wrote the core of Fantasia, he thought a lot about Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian author whose fiction deftly wove elements of magic and surreality into places and plots that almost felt real. He wanted to accomplish the same thing, to add supernatural touches to his contemplations of politics so that the listener might see reality differently, might question what they were missing about this plane. SLIFT even borrowed the song title “Orbis Tertius” from a 1940 Borges short story that uses the idea of subjective idealism—that is, believing the world only exists as far as our minds go—to ask questions of memory, history, possibility, and, ultimately, control. Fantasia, then, is an imagined town plagued by a sense of unknowing and xenophobia, of trying to eliminate anything that disrupts the accepted order.
 
The town first comes into focus on “Corrupted Sky,” where lurid keyboards and a relentless rhythm section illustrate a city of power-hungry wastrels. Jean’s guitar solo feels like an exhilarating chase sequence in a video game, as he tries to dodge doom while arriving in Fantasia. They treat the newcomer like poison incarnate during the prog gem “The Village,” while he predicts their downfall during “A Storm of Wings.” In a mighty, fists-up anthem that suggests Clutch getting wild, SLIFT alludes to John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov to portend the arrival of some great liberating force, some redemptive truth.
 
That slowly starts to emerge during the record’s back half, as memory returns to the masses, as people start to remember that they are more than the oppressive uniformity of their society. “Waiting Man”—a psychedelic ballad that suggests Pink Floyd wandering into the Master of Reality sessions—is the breaking point. The narrator realizes that the world he’s committed to is a lie. “I waited for love, waited my time,” Jean Fossat sings, his voice more vulnerable than it’s ever been. “Waited the seasons of my life.” He knows he must find his own way out of this mess and into something better, so long as it’s not too late.
 
It is dreadfully easy these days to feel powerless. We have instant access to a world of news, and so much of it is so very heavy. SLIFT reckons directly with the modern onslaught of cruelty and absurdity on Fantasia, whether that’s not caring about our home planet or one another. But these eight songs are about trusting in some hidden power for fighting back, for believing in a world where something we cannot yet articulate or define offers not just a way to disrupt the status quo but perhaps to destroy it completely. SLIFT is loud, heavy, and aggressive inside these anthems. They’re preparing for a battle they think we can still win.
 

“Crosshatching space rock to stoner metal, Krautrock to black metal, the void to the arduous resurrection, their musical scope is broad enough to at least approach that end-times question: Where can we go when what we have is gone?” - Bandcamp (Album Of The Day)

“Exhilaratingly expansive music balanced by a sense of darkness and foreboding, travelling simultaneously into outer space and inner turmoil. SLIFT’s expansive energy and transcendental creativity provide a uniquely rewarding thrill.” - Kerrang!

“An exhilarating ride, one which continually scales modes of attack and intensity, even as it’s held in place by SLIFT’s purposeful songwriting.”- Wire
 
“One of the most mesmerizing live bands you could ever hope to see.”- Louder
 
“SLIFT’s mind-expanding mastery of heavy dynamics, six-string flair and psychedelic experimentalism marks them out as one of the most exciting metal bands we’ve heard…” - Guitar World
 
 “The psych-rock giants blur the lines between rock subgenres for an all-encompassing, full-body listening experience” - Glide
 

Today, January 19th, French psychedelic rock outfit SLIFT release their Sub Pop debut, ILION, on CD/LP/DSP. 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 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 Inexplorée. 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, UMMON, and a subsequent limited-edition 7” for the Sub Pop Singles Club. 
 
SLIFT will embark on a mammoth UK & EU tour beginning February 23rd in Brighton, UK, and ending April 6th in Marseille, France. The band’s 2023 KEXP performance is a tantalizing taste of the band’s live powers, which merge earth-rattling volume, cosmic soundscapes, and psychedelic visuals into a mind-bending, glorious experience. See below for a complete list of dates.
 

Fri. Feb. 23 - Brighton, UK - Chalk
Sat. Feb. 24 - Manchester, UK - Gorilla
Sun. Feb. 25 - Dublin, IE -  Whelan’s
Mon. Feb. 27 - Leeds, UK - Brudenell
Wed. Feb. 28 - London, UK - Electric Ballroom
Thu. Feb. 29 - Lille, FR - Aéronef
Fri. Mar. 01 - Paris, FR - La Cigale
Sat. Mar. 02 - Saint Malo, FR - Route du Rock Hiver
Wed. Mar. 13 -  Toulouse, FR - Bikini
Fri. Mar. 15 - Nantes, FR- Stereolux
Sat. Mar. 16 - Rouen, FR - 106
Mon. Mar. 18 - Bruxelles, FR - Ancienne Belgique
Tue. Mar. 19 -  Utrecht, NL - Tivoli Vredenburg
Wed. Mar. 20 - Cologne, DE- Club Volta
Thu. Mar. 21 - Groningen, NL - Vera
Fri. Mar. 22 - Hamburg, DE - Gruenspan
Sun. Mar. 24 - Copenhagen, DK - Loppen
Mon. Mar. 25 - Gothenburg, SE - Pustervik
Tue. Mar. 26 - Oslo, NO- John Dee
Wed. Mar. 27 - Stockholm, SE - Hus 7
Sat. Mar. 30 - Berlin, DE - Lido
Mon. Apr. 01 - Leipzig, DE- UT Connewitz
Mon. Apr. 02 -  Stuttgart, DE - Wisemann Club
Tue. Apr. 03 - Esch Sur Alzette, LU - Kulturfabrik
Wed. Apr. 04 - Zurich, CH - Mascotte
Thu. Apr. 05 -  Lyon, FR - Epicerie Moderne
Fri. Apr. 06 - Marseille, FR - Espace Julien

On January 19th, French psychedelic rock outfit SLIFT will release their Sub Pop debut, ILION, on CD/LP/DSP. Formed in 2016, SLIFT quickly made an impression on rockers worldwide with their 2017 debut EP, Space Is the Key, the following year’s full-length La Planète Inexplorée, and their acclaimed 2020 album UMMON.
 
Now, on the heels of the previously released singles “Ilion” and “Nimh,” comes an official video by Guthio and Alexis Regidor with visuals by Dimitri Thouzery for the album’s centerpiece, “Weavers’ Weft.”
 
The band shares this about the song:
“‘Weavers’ Weft’ is the song that opens the album’s second half. There was a tipping point in the narrative at the end of the first half of the album. The second half of the record is no longer situated in the linear flow of time that serves as a backdrop for many stories. From ‘Weaver’s Weft’ onwards, time goes both into the past and into the future. The piece talks about weavers of the fabric of time, entities who continually create space-times, each containing its share of universes. Everything that exists is written there, and it is possible to travel between frames. Everything is cyclical and infinite. To illustrate this (or maybe it’s the other way around?), we wanted something monolithic and timeless. It is as if this song has been sung for millennia (time goes back to the past!). The heavier parts are inspired by bands like Part Chimp and Gnod.”
 
Click HERE to watch.
 
SLIFT will embark on a mammoth UK & EU tour beginning February 23rd in Brighton, UK, and ending April 6th in Marseille, France. The band’s 2023 KEXP performance is a tantalizing taste of the band’s live powers, which merge earth-rattling volume, cosmic soundscapes, and psychedelic visuals into a mind-bending, glorious experience. See below for a complete list of dates.
 

Fri. Feb. 23 - Brighton, UK - Chalk
Sat. Feb. 24 - Manchester, UK - Gorilla
Sun. Feb. 25 - Dublin, IE -  Whelan’s
Mon. Feb. 27 - Leeds, UK - Brudenell
Wed. Feb. 28 - London, UK - Electric Ballroom
Thu. Feb. 29 - Lille, FR - Aéronef
Fri. Mar. 01 - Paris, FR - La Cigale
Sat. Mar. 02 - Saint Malo, FR - Route du Rock Hiver
Wed. Mar. 13 -  Toulouse, FR - Bikini
Fri. Mar. 15 - Nantes, FR- Stereolux
Sat. Mar. 16 - Rouen, FR - 106
Mon. Mar. 18 - Bruxelles, FR - Ancienne Belgique
Tue. Mar. 19 -  Utrecht, NL - Tivoli Vredenburg
Wed. Mar. 20 - Cologne, DE- Club Volta
Thu. Mar. 21 - Groningen, NL - Vera
Fri. Mar. 22 - Hamburg, DE - Gruenspan
Sun. Mar. 24 - Copenhagen, DK - Loppen
Mon. Mar. 25 - Gothenburg, SE - Pustervik
Tue. Mar. 26 - Oslo, NO- John Dee
Wed. Mar. 27 - Stockholm, SE - Hus 7
Sat. Mar. 30 - Berlin, DE - Lido
Mon. Apr. 01 - Leipzig, DE- UT Connewitz
Mon. Apr. 02 -  Stuttgart, DE - Wisemann Club
Tue. Apr. 03 - Esch Sur Alzette, LU - Kulturfabrik
Wed. Apr. 04 - Zurich, CH - Mascotte
Thu. Apr. 05 -  Lyon, FR - Epicerie Moderne
Fri. Apr. 06 - Marseille, FR - Espace Julien

Sub Pop will release SLIFT’s ILION, the third full-length album by the French psychedelic rock outfit, on January 19th, 2024. Today, the band shares the new song “Nimh” with a visualizer by Dimitri Thouzery & Guthio.
 
“Nimh” is a 9+ minute prog-infused journey filled with jazzy rhythms, deft guitar/bass/drum interplay, and layered textures, all anchored by a massive Black Sabbath-esque riff that eventually crumbles into a thundering doom-metal coda. It’s a fitting sample of the forthcoming album, which 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 said of the song/video: “‘Nimh’ is the second track on the record; it follows ‘Ilion.’ It’s a piece that talks about men’s slow but certain descent towards total madness. To illustrate this, the song tells the story of the drift through space of a ship, the ‘Nimh,’ and its crew, which is made up of leaders of huge corporations and anyone who has accumulated a lot of money on Earth. They set off for what they think will be a new world but never arrive at their destination. The gods of Time are facetious. The song is sung by the people left on Earth, prophesying this failure, abandoned to live on this barren planet entering the last millennia of its existence. As surprising as it may seem, we had Nina Simone in mind when writing a good part of the piece, especially the second part. To support the song’s subject, we also pushed our psych-rock towards bands like Converge.”
 
Formed in 2016, SLIFT quickly made an impression on rockers worldwide with their 2017 debut EP, Space Is the Key, the following year’s full-length La Planeté Inexplorée, and their acclaimed 2020 album UMMON.
 
SLIFT will embark on a mammoth UK & EU tour beginning February 23rd in Brighton, UK, and ending April 6th in Marseille, France. The band’s 2023 KEXP performance is a tantalizing taste of the band’s live powers, which merge earth-rattling volume, cosmic soundscapes, and psychedelic visuals into a mind-bending, glorious experience. See below for a complete list of dates.

 
Fri. Feb. 23 - Brighton, UK - Chalk
Sat. Feb. 24 - Manchester, UK - Gorilla
Sun. Feb. 25 - Dublin, IE -  Whelan’s
Mon. Feb. 27 - Leeds, UK - Brudenell
Wed. Feb. 28 - London, UK - Electric Ballroom
Thu. Feb. 29 - Lille, FR - Aéronef
Fri. Mar. 01 - Paris, FR - La Cigale
Sat. Mar. 02 - Saint Malo, FR - Route du Rock Hiver
Wed. Mar. 13 -  Toulouse, FR - Bikini
Fri. Mar. 15 - Nantes, FR- Stereolux
Sat. Mar. 16 - Rouen, FR - 106
Mon. Mar. 18 - Bruxelles, FR - Ancienne Belgique
Tue. Mar. 19 -  Utrecht, NL - Tivoli Vredenburg
Wed. Mar. 20 - Cologne, DE- Club Volta
Thu. Mar. 21 - Groningen, NL - Vera
Fri. Mar. 22 - Hamburg, DE - Gruenspan
Sun. Mar. 24 - Copenhagen, DK - Loppen
Mon. Mar. 25 - Gothenburg, SE - Pustervik
Tue. Mar. 26 - Oslo, NO- John Dee
Wed. Mar. 27 - Stockholm, SE - Hus 7
Sat. Mar. 30 - Berlin, DE - Lido
Mon. Apr. 01 - Leipzig, DE- UT Connewitz
Mon. Apr. 02 -  Stuttgart, DE - Wisemann Club
Tue. Apr. 03 - Esch Sur Alzette, LU - Kulturfabrik
Wed. Apr. 04 - Zurich, CH - Mascotte
Thu. Apr. 05 -  Lyon, FR - Epicerie Moderne
Fri. Apr. 06 - Marseille, FR - Espace Julien

SLIFT 

ILION