Sleep

Hailing from Northern California, the trio Sleep embodied the pinnacle of stoner rock, their path drifting through intermittent visibility within a haze of self-imposed cannabis consumption. During their active years, the group produced some of the most crushing and unyielding doom metal records ever committed to tape.

Around the dawn of the 1990s in San Jose, California, bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros, guitarists Matt Pike and Justin Marler, and drummer Chris Haikus assembled the band, quickly earning nods to overlooked 1980s doom acts such as the Obsessed, Pentagram, and particularly Saint Vitus. Their murky 1991 debut, Volume One, paid homage to sonic forebears Black Sabbath, yet the vision crystallized only after Marler’s exit—reportedly to pursue monastic life—and the arrival of 1993’s Sleep’s Holy Mountain. Heavy metal outlets embraced the album, positioning Sleep next to Kyuss and Monster Magnet at the forefront of the rising stoner rock and doom metal movement. Momentum from a brief European trek backing Trouble and Cathedral led London Records to extend a rare six-figure contract, yet the band opted instead to plunge further into their dense, deliberate sound.

Nearly two years of composition and revision, accompanied by relentless marijuana use, yielded the anticipated opus initially titled Dopesmoker and later Jerusalem, which London Records received as one unbroken sixty-minute tribute to cannabis that the musicians declined to edit or divide. Prolonged negotiations stalled the project for an additional two years until, having exhausted their advance on personal indulgences, Sleep dissolved rather than compromise the recording. Matt Pike subsequently launched the more propulsive High on Fire, while Chris Haikus later rejoined the now-ordained Justin Marler in the Sabians. An unsanctioned edition of Jerusalem surfaced on Rise Above Records, but a definitive, band-approved Dopesmoker finally appeared in 2003, apparently closing the tangled chapter.

In 2009, however, Sleep reconvened in the U.K. for a pair of performances at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. Energized anew, they resumed festival appearances, though original drummer Chris Hakius departed soon afterward. Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder filled the role, enabling sporadic touring from 2010 through 2014. That year the band issued “Clarity,” a nearly ten-minute track for Adult Swim’s weekly singles series—their first new recording in two decades—which Southern Lord reissued in 2017. The following year brought the long-awaited fourth album, The Sciences, on Third Man Records, issued fittingly on 4/20.