“Oh shit” were the cries heard throughout the metal world when the 2010 Sleep reunion tour plans were announced after the band’s appearance at the 2009 All Tomorrow’s Parties. The band was together for a short amount of time in the 1990s, but conflict with London Records over Dopesmoker, their long-form album comprised of one hour-plus track of trippy doom sludge, caused the band to break up (and eventually birthed Jerusalem). Holy Mountain, their first official release, became part of the canon of stoner metal and Sleep’s position as one of the primary progenitors of the genre has been confirmed and cemented.
Elvis deMorrow and I, who will be swapping the dialogue below, were privileged enough to attend the first Sleep show of a two night run at San Francisco’s fancy-pants Regency Ballroom during the recent reunion tour. Their epic set would feature Holy Mountain in its entirety, plus most of Dopesmoker. A thick haze of marijuana smoke enveloped our heads as we entered the beaux-arts room with 35-foot ceilings and 22 turn-of-the-century teardrop chandeliers.
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E: The triumphant, glorious Iommi photographic backdrop prior to the Sleep set was inspiring, but there was a deep incongruity in the seemingly random, 90-second snippets of fucking awesome Sabbath tracks that ran through the house PA for the entire setup process.
C: Yeah, the whole on/off Sabbath intro session was annoying, but it all served as an effective reminder that, although they might be the most essential purveyors of stoner metal ever, Sleep are also in many respects a tribute to Sabbath and Iommi in particular.
E: There was no logic to the track sequencing, and deeply familiar riffs would drop without proper preamble, and end almost before they were established. I am strongly inclined to blame the venue for this inauspicious introduction, but I was compelled to protest in extreme yogic ‘prone’ regardless.
C: You fell right on your butt, twice! Apparently the tiny amount of weed smoke we directly inhaled was significantly amplified by the enormous quantity we inhaled second-hand. It hit you like a ton of bricks, eh?
E: Fortunately I was rapidly revived by the astronaut as he tuned the gain knobs on the five amps laid before Iommi’s gaze — projected by fools, but suffering none.
C: Yeah, the astronaut would prove to be a key figure in the whole affair.
E: In retrospect, perhaps the entire soundman botch job on the preliminary Sabbath riffs was some sort of extreme binary exercise to prepare the audience for what was to follow.
C: Come again?
E: Anyone who suspects Sleep ride an inappropriately lengthy & monochromatic canon across their recorded catalog is strongly recommended to attend a live performance. It is quite remarkable to be pummeled with the same essential aesthetic for close to two hours and not find much at all lacking in nuance, texture, timbre, or propulsion along the way. It is not out of line to compare these San Jose gents to Shankar, rather than to their droning brethren & the bands they sired.
C: I guess you’re hitting on something important there, but I will say that a raga and stoner metal sludge begat remarkably different mental states. Being spaced out at a Sleep show is not that close to meditation. I think it’s more akin to being aurally hypnotized into repetitive head-nodding and bull-horn brandishing.
E: The initial guitar chord from Pike’s dual-stringed ax was of the most earth-shattering variety I could imagine hearing. Either they dialed in the absolute most efficient equation of wattage to room size, or they certainly stumbled upon it that night.
C: Sounded bout as good as The Melvins — same room, equal auditory squashing.
E: Good fucking lord. Sudden & rational questions arise regarding why a guitar band would need to be that horrifically loud to accomplish their objectives, but that is like asking why Jarred Allen sports the number “69” on his Vikings jersey; the answer is immediate, inarguable, and extremely disconcerting. In this case, there was no choice but to plug the ears and go along for the ride.
C: I made a quick trip to the bar to find some napkins. I learned my lesson the first time I saw Lightning Bolt. Tinnitus is no fun.
E: I am generally prepared for the sonic level and approach at any given live show I attend, but this set took a solid 15 minutes before I could begin to penetrate beyond the sheer loudness. Once I had my wits about me I began to dig deep into the subtle ritard they would bring again and again, at both predictable and rare moments, within otherwise stable propulsion, and of course their ability to transform simple tempos and time signatures into eerily transcendent polyrhythms by nature of their repetition and heavy magickxs — in this way they do in fact bring new riffs.
C: Sleep has this amazing ability to create space within the violence of their riffing for feedback and drone. Two moments stick out — number one was a section with what felt like five minutes of Matt Pike feedback, and the second was a moment with Cisneros facing the drums and playing an ULTRA-slow bass line that felt like it lasted for days.
E: Bearing witness to new riffs in a live setting is a rare & special treat, and it can arise from many different bases of intent. Most are stoopid, though some are founded in extensive composition. After watching this trio pummel such a limited pentatonic system with minor tonal variance for well over an hour, you are either fundamentally awed at what they have accomplished, or verging on bored tears. These are both valid responses, and I found the performance to be significantly stronger by virtue of their avoidance of numerous small choices that would have put me out of the mesmer they were willfully creating in us. The worship of marijuana may be disturbing to some, and is confounding to me, but the worship of time is fundamentally sound, massive, and difficult to grasp — I can dig it.
C: After staring at the projections, watching the repeated passage of the astronaut back and forth across the stage, and having my brain melted by metal, what it all came down to for me was this simple message: smoke weed and blast off into outer space.
