Stoner metal legends Sleep have quite the reputation of keeping fans waiting between albums. That being said, no wait has been as long as what they made their legions of pot-adoring fans after their seminal 2003 release Dopesmoker. However, after fifteen years of near radio silence, Sleep has surprise dropped their new record The Sciences in the most Sleep way possible – on 4/20.
The album was first teased in July of last year, when the band posted a message in morse code saying they had almost finished recording.
The Sciences is available now everywhere one can listen to music in 2018. The album is six songs and 53 minutes of the purest form of Sleep riffs (take with caution). It is nice to be able to say that the band has lost none of its sense of humour, either, with tracks such as “Marijuanaut’s Theme” (my bid for best song title of the year) and “Giza Butler,” homage to Black Sabbath’s very own Geezer Butler.
In 2014, SLEEP released “The Clarity”, its first new song since “Dopesmoker”, as part of the Adult Swim Singles Program. In an interview with NPR at the time, the band stated: “SLEEP has been sporadically writing riffs for a while now…. There is no preconceived idea of what the new material should be. It would be an amalgamated effort of decades of riff immersion.”
After their first two albums Volume 1 and Sleep’s Holy Mountain in 1991 and 1992 respectively, the band waited until 1999 to even think about releasing their followup Jerusalem, which the band’s label despised and refused to release. The band ended up releasing it through other labels, but it wasn’t until 2003 that the band properly cleaned up the material and released it under the name Dopesmoker in 2003. The record continued to develop its legendary status before being reissued in 2012.
Listen to a full stream of the album below.
The Sciences Track List
1. The Sciences
2. Marijuanaut’s Theme
3. Sonic Titan
4. Antarcticans Thawed
5. Giza Butler
6. The Botanist
Photo Credit: Mauricio Alvarado
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