SLIFT is made up of brothers Jean and Remí Fossat and Canek Flores, who first met the brothers Fossat at (of all things) school. After the band formally came together in 2016, they quickly made their 2017 debut EP, Space Is the Key, which merged stoner rock’s heaviness with the sugar-rush qualities of garage rock. From there, things only got weirder: The trio experimented with faster tempos and bongos(!) on the following year’s full-length La Planeté Inexploreé.

SLIFT’s newest album ILION is a towering work of rock music, a steamrolling record that starts at the highest peak and never lets up. If that sounds overwhelming, trust that this Toulouse trio have you in good hands. Their third full-length feels massive and oceanic, merging the furious intensity of metal and the wigged out guitar heroics of psych rock with postrock’s epic sense of scale.

Reducing ILION to a list of reference points would be missing the point—specifically, that you really have to sit down and experience this thing and let it take over your ear space. Heavy shit, to be sure—but fear not, because you don’t need a 12-sided die and a copy of The Odyssey to get what SLIFT are dishing out on ILION. All you need are two ears, an open mind, and a ticket to a live show to be truly blown away.

French three-piece SERVO deal in the kind of dark, post-punk noise-rock that storms with ease between gloomy, hypnotic moments and bouts of powerful, motorik noise. SERVO’s sound finds an unstable home between heavy, droning psych-rock and gothic post-punk; forlorn, jangling guitars and deep, austere vocals breaking down into piercing blasts of feedback and distortion.