In 1992 this San Jose band helped light a fire under the infant genre of stoner rock with their second LP,
Sleep’s Holy Mountain, slowing their blues-based riffs to a muddy crawl and blasting them through a wall of planet-shaking amps— it sounds like
Master of Reality creeping through a thick cloud of cannabis smoke. Sleep’s true monument, though, was to be their next album, the heady and hypnotic
Dopesmoker, whose single hour-long track traded in the heavy-bottomed boogie of
Holy Mountain for massive, meditative waves of sludge—in no time at all it was enshrined as the soundtrack to dorm-room bong sessions across the country. Work on
Dopesmoker began in 1995, but record-label nonsense delayed its release until 2003—even a slightly abridged version called
Jerusalem didn’t see the light of day until 1999. That was too little, too late, because the band had dissolved a year earlier, broken by the stress of the situation. Bassist and vocalist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius formed the drony, mystical Om while guitarist Matt Pike assembled barbarian-metal combo High on Fire. When Sleep reunited in 2009, all three members got on board, but Hakius soon left, to be replaced by Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder. They’re still spreading the band’s hazy, bombastic gospel, and this summer they recorded their first song since
Dopesmoker,
“The Clarity,” for Adult Swim’s singles series. It’s almost ten minutes long, and it sounds exactly like Sleep.
—Luca Cimarusti