I would like to start this review with an apology. A few weeks ago I reviewed The Sword’s new LP ‘Used Future’, and in the introduction I made a not-so-favorable assertion about the state of stoner rock today – specifically that it has been unable to progress since the 90’s due to early 70’s Sabbath being its only influence. I made this statement with lament, as stoner rock is one of my favorite obscure genres to brag about being a fan of, and has held a special place in my heart since I discovered Electric Wizard’s ‘Dopethrone’ at 14. I also made it so I could commend The Sword’s decision to work in new genres before I slammed them for not being very good at it. But that’s beside the point.

After my first listen to Sleep’s ‘The Sciences’, which they dropped on 4/20 off a single day’s notice (and relative silence since the early 2000s, I might add), it felt as if they’d read what I said and decided to record an entire album to prove me wrong*. The comeback they’ve managed with this release is staggering; they’ve retained everything that made their older releases great, while working in new influences from their time apart and improving production, all without sacrificing that sweet, syrupy heaviness. Stoner rock ain’t dead yet.

Stoner Rock/Stoner Metal/Doom Metal/Stoner Doom/Sludge/whatever label you wanna put on them pioneers Sleep have been, along with Electric Wizard and lighter acts like Kyuss and Fu Manchu, the non-Sabbath industry standard for their genre about as long as it’s existed, with their 1993 ‘Holy Mountain’ and the hour-long, single-track ‘Dopesmoker’ being among very few albums from the scene to become known outside of it. Their music is slow, down tuned, bass-heavy and exists almost entirely in the blues scale, kinda like if DJ Screw had remixed Black Sabbath’s ‘Master of Reality’ off a near-lethal dose of Promethazine.

During their post-Dopesmoker hiatus the trio went their separate ways, with guitarist Matt Pike going on to form the much-more-aggressive metal band High on Fire and Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, the bassist/vocalist and drummer, forming the duo Om, which explored a more meditative and drone-heavy style of rock music. The group eventually got back together in 2009, with Jason Roeder of Neurosis replacing Hakius on drums, and while at the time I thought this was cool, I really thought it was just to play a few shows, have a few laughs, and release a single or two – I never expected them to write another album, let alone a good one.

I held onto the latter part of this expectation even as I glanced at the tracklist before pressing play. There are only six tracks, and they’ve been performing two of them live for a while now (since 2003, in Sonic Titan’s case). This was looking a lot more like a just-for-fun EP to me than a full-fledged release, but as my listen went on, it became clear that I was thankfully, and beautifully, wrong.

The title ‘track’, which is really more of an extended intro than an actual song, immediately showed me that, if nothing else, Pike’s guitar tone is just as fat and nasty as it used to be. The first thing we hear on the album is alien-sounding beeping and screeching noises, already keeping in line with the ‘stoned in space’ aesthetic Sleep’s been using since they got back together. This beeping is eventually revealed to be feedback, as Pike rips a low C in classical stoner rock fashion (strumming so hard that the note initially sounds a half-step high and settles into the correct pitch). From here, I started to get the inkling that shit was about to go down. There’s about three minutes of build-up next, with Pike noodling on power chords as ambient bass drum and thunder sounds occasionally intervene. An organ pad emerges from this mist, still rising in intensity, until the music stops completely and the sound effect of someone (apparently Cisneros) hitting a bong thrusts us into the music. It’s corny, but would we really have it any other way?

‘Marijuanaut’s Theme’, one of three brand-new songs on this release, is a good track, but it still had me a little skeptical. The band is definitely groovin, so you can immediately hear how well they play together (honestly much tighter than on their earlier releases), but I just wasn’t all that stoked about any of the riffs. There’s a pronounced droneyness to the track, no doubt inspired by the stuff Cisneros has been putting out in recent years, and from the perspective of Cisneros’ bass playing this is a welcome addition – where in the past he would’ve sat on one or two pitches per chord, he now often alternates between the neighboring blues scale tones in an ostinato-type fashion, which definitely makes things a little more interesting and helps keep the pulse during the album’s many ultraslow tempos. The droneyness of the core structure on this track, however, was a bit bland to me. Pitchfork says this is the best song on the album, but I think I’d call it the weakest. Still, a blazing guitar solo from Pike ends it on a strong note.

The next track, ‘Sonic Titan’, is my favorite on the album. Maybe there’s some bias here, as the sloppy live version on Dopesmoker has always been one of my favorite Sleep songs, but it’s hard to argue that it’s one of the most dynamic ones here. Clocking in at 12 minutes with 5 minutes of exposition before the vocals even enter, the track is enormous, and with Matt Pike’s a cappella section near the beginning dipping under 30 BPM, it is by far the sludgiest. The band passes from riff to riff and tempo to tempo with a seamless weight, but the sections are quite varied, from the intro which sounds like something straight off of Sabbath’s ‘Vol. 4’ to the incredibly sinister sounding verse section featuring Cisneros singing an octave lower than on the old version (I find this register suits his voice and the quasi-mystical lyrics better than his previous method of trying to sound as much like Ozzy as possible).

The fourth track, ‘Antarcticans Thawed’, could be said to be more or less the centerpiece of the album. It beats out Sonic Titan lengthwise at 15 minutes, and like ‘Marijuanaut’, it seems to have a good amount of Om influence. This time around, however, I find the droney riffs to have much more of their desired hypnotic effect. The track builds in an epic manner, with the bass and guitar layering gradually over march-like drums. Vocal performance from Cisneros is a lot more aggressive here than on other tracks – it reminds me quite a bit of his sound on ‘From Beyond’ from Holy Mountain (actually, now that I think of it, this track is basically From Beyond 2, but I’m not complaining). My favorite part, though, is the fact that around 4 minutes and 30 seconds in, Sleep somehow manages to make one of the simplest possible riffs – literally just an octave and some half steps – into the most crushingly evil moment on the entire album. This section is absolutely monolithic, and really forms a nice centerpoint within the project.

The final portion of the album’s ‘meat’ is ‘Giza Butler’, a play on the name of Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler and… pyramids? (NOTE: I have since been informed that this and a lot of the lyrics are a reference to the Dune novels) I dunno, but this track is dope too. The Sabbath influence is obviously dripping, especially evident in the quicker tempo (compared to the rest of the album), the vocal melodies, and the riff that hits around the 5 minute mark. Also, the lyrics on this one are hilarious. Not that the other songs are the work of any profound bard, or that Sleep has any desire lyrically than to write weed-themed shit that sounds cool over their instrumentals, but as I listened through I picked out such gems as “The riff tree is risen”, “bong water of life”, “The Pterodactyl flies again”, and my personal favorite, “The CBD Gun” (I’ve also been corrected on this; it’s CBD-eacon. But I would rather believe it’s the first one)

Lastly, the instrumental outro ‘The Botanist’, although not a track I would listen to out of context, goes some places I really did not expect Sleep to go – a cool addition at the end of a record where one would think they know more-or-less what’s going on stylistically. First and foremost, it uses an acoustic guitar, which is something that until this point I was convinced Matt Pike had never even heard of, and it creates an interesting contrast between classic stoner idioms and almost metal-ballad material. Judging by their typical themes I can almost guarantee they were thinking about some sort of all-knowing alien who has humbly devoted himself to a life of meditation and cultivating weed for the galaxy when they were writing this. A fade into feedback and trippy sound effects ushers out the album the same way it came in.

Overall, I really could not be happier with this project. Pike and Cisneros, in addition to drastically improving their musicianship in the years since Dopesmoker, have brought the best parts of their respective post-Sleep bands into the tried and true stoner rock idiom, proving that it is indeed possible to innovate within the genre without ditching what makes it great. Pike’s riff-writing has received quite a bit of juice from the more high-octane work of High on Fire, and it somehow balances really well with the more ‘Zen’ style of playing and singing that Cisneros has picked up (a clash that, I’ll admit, I worried was going to detract from the album). A modern, cleaner production style, which I also worried was gonna mess with the vibe, ends up fleshing out the music beautifully and making it sound much more three-dimensional than anything Sleep has done before. I’ll say it, this is the best comeback album since A Tribe Called Quest. In a genre that I thought I was done with, especially since the new Sword album, The Sciences has convinced me to pay attention again.

Rating: 8/10

Does it slap?: Yes

Drink to pair with: Bong Water of Life™

*it almost felt this way, anyway. I know no one reads my blog, much less cult-famous musicians