French (& French-Canadian) Art-Metal

Albums By Slift, Proton Burst & Dissimulator

Slift

I first wrote about the French stoner/space-rock trio Slift a year ago, calling them “a perfect storm of space-rockin’ cosmic fury” and “galloping toward the horizon…set on maximum destruction all the time.” They’ve recently released their third full-length album, Ilion, and while I still think its predecessor, 2020’s Ummon, is their masterpiece, they’ve expanded their sound in some thrilling ways on the new one.

Ilion only has eight tracks, but most of them run between nine and almost 13 minutes. The whole thing lasts a staggering 79:08, and the songs are often structured as suites, with several distinct movements or phases, making them feel even longer than they are despite the fact that the band — guitarist Jean Fossat, his bassist brother Remí, and drummer Canek Flores — often play very fast indeed. Their songs have the riffs and screaming solos of psychedelic hard rock, the throbbing, ever-shifting basslines of Lemmy’s work in Hawkwind, and surprisingly jazzy drums. But they also bust out upper-register vocal harmonies worthy of Jon Anderson of Yes.

That’s just the core of their sound, though. On Ilion, they introduce elements not present in their previous work, including piano, vibes, synths, wordless female vocals like something from a DJ Shadow track (on “The Words That Have Never Been Heard”) and the final piece of the space-rock puzzle: saxophone. This album is a for-real journey; listening to the whole thing front to back — and it’s absolutely designed to be heard that way; this is not a record you can pull individual tracks from — feels like being on an endless voyage from one star to another. It could be 80 minutes, it could be 80 years. You can’t even really use the lyrics as an anchor. The way Jean Fossat sings, and the way the vocals are mixed, they’re mostly indecipherable, though you can pick up enough to know they’re in English. Time loses meaning when Ilion is playing. It’s some of the most grandiose, transformative music I’ve ever heard.

Dissimulator are a thrash/death metal quartet from Montreal. Most young bands start out combining their influences and eventually develop a voice of their own. Dissimulator are on that path, but the particular sounds and styles they draw from, and how they mix and match them, all add up to make their debut, Lower Form Resistance, a must-hear. There are elements of Voivod’s cold-eyed cyber-metal, Megadeth’s intricate thrash (as heard on Rust in Peace and Countdown to Extinction), Napalm Death’s sci-fi-tinged late ’90s albums like Diatribes, Words From the Exit Wound and Inside the Torn Apart, and the robotic vocal harmonies of Cynic’s Focus. But it never feels like pastiche. The music has a ton of energy. The riffs twist and turn in compelling ways, and the drummer’s great. But the vocals aren’t nearly as compelling as the other elements; they’re a somewhat generic hoarse roar. Sadly, that’s very common in modern metal. So focus on the riffs and the blast beats, and by the time this seven-track, 42-minute album is over, your jaw will be on the floor and your neck will ache from headbanging.

Proton Burst’s La Nuit was originally released in 1994, a six-track album inspired by a comic book by Philippe Druillet. According to the press release, the record “tells the story of a band of futuristic Hell’s Angels moving through a post-apocalyptic scenario in search of one last ‘junk shot,’ fleeing from ferocious vampire-cops with fascist ways.” Its six untitled tracks flow seamlessly into one another, manifesting as a single 35-minute work of progressive industrial art-metal.

This was Proton Burst’s first album, after several demo tapes, and in some ways it’s of its time. You can hear echoes of Voivod, Prong, Coroner and Treponem Pal in their sound, with a few dashes of Napalm Death as well. But there are also elements that remind me of Public Image Ltd., Einstürzende Neubauten, Swans, and even Caspar Brötzmann Massaker. They embrace dissonant clanging one moment, then deploy gentle tabla rhythms the next. Some sections of one movement may ride a hard funk beat, while others are delivered at a grindcore sprint. The vocals lay a guttural death metal roar alongside a postpunk wail, and samples add extra elements of chaos and confusion: we hear operatic female voices, metallic pings and scrapes, revving motorcycle engines, and the album ends with a 90-second passage of Beethoven. Even if you don’t speak French (I don’t), it’s a deeply immersive album with an apocalyptic feel, crushingly heavy and dissonant.

La Nuit has just been reissued by the ambitious metal label I, Voidhanger, who regularly release some of the heaviest and most mind-warping music around. Neptunian Maximalism, Esoctrilihum, Ævangelist, and Sarmat are just a few of the brilliant acts they’ve ushered out of the cosmic blackness. The original album, remastered and sounding great, has been paired with a 57-minute live performance from 1995 that breaks the six movements into 14 smaller pieces and adds three other songs, “Straight Forward,” “Stone” and “Black Sun.” You also get the 14-minute demo they sent to Druillet to get his approval to adapt his comic into an album. If you’re a fan of physical music like me, it comes in a great package: a foldout cardboard sleeve the size of a DVD case, with a highly informative 16-page booklet that tells the story of the band, the comic, and the album and is packed with Druillet’s amazing art, halfway between Heavy Metal and Frank Miller’s Ronin.

Before I go: When I say I’ve been waiting years for this, I mean it. On March 29, On-U Sound is releasing High Above Harlesden 1978-2023, a 6CD Creation Rebel box set that includes almost their entire back catalog (their slightly poppy early ’80s album Lows and Highs is not included, but their 2023 reunion album Hostile Environment, which I wrote about here, is). If you’ve never heard Starship Africa, you have no idea how psychedelic dub can truly get. Crucial.

That’s it for now. See you next week!