Sleep - The Sciences

As it turns out, after the decade and a half of uncertainty about the matter since Dopesmoker, Sleep do still indeed like to smoke weed.

I’m just joking of course, but this album, and my revisiting of Sleep’s previous works in preparation for writing this, has shown me one thing that I certainly think is worth addressing. It could be because I don’t blaze, but stoner metal in general (and the stoner doom that Sleep helped pioneer) has a significantly lower appeal to me on average than most other subgenres of metal.

In my numerous times listening to this album, I felt such a struggle to connect to the large majority of it. There are many albums for which I’ve had to break through some kinds of barriers to begin to understand and to appreciate and enjoy, many of my favorite albums in fact, but what I’ve experienced so much with stoner metal and with my repeated listens to this album is that the homogeneously hazy smokey atmosphere and dirge-y pace of the music is just something that doesn’t wow me. And while this album has grown on me, a little, I feel like what it and the subgenre offers for the most part is something that I can get more of in other places for less extraneous auditory burden and relatively unanimous fawning over Black Sabbath’s 1970’s catalog.

While listening to this album over and over again, waiting for it to grow on me more and trying to see it and analyze it from the best angle possible so as to understand why so many were so stoked to hear Sleep making music again, I realized that where I am, I just simply don’t see the appeal of the style. I already mentioned that I have no inner part in stoner culture and don’t smoke weed, so it just leads me to wonder: is from within that culture or while high the only real position to view this album from? Is that why I don’t vibe as with this album as much as others probably do? I know it’s certainly written with recreational marijuana use in mind, but is that the only way to like this album? I’m truly unsure.

Consequently, this might make my opinion on this album completely worthless to some, and I can understand. Nevertheless, I’m going to still try to discuss this album as best as I can, as I hope my peripherally outsider viewpoint can hopefully provide a unique perspective while I tell myself to address the album for the purpose it’s intended to serve, knowing I’m not someone it’s catering to.

The Sciences starts with a warbly distorted guitar drone of sorts interspersed with the sounds of a few distant explosions occupying it’s first three minutes. It drags on quite a bit too long and because of its length, it’s not exactly tension-building or interesting to listen to, nor does it really even do all that much to set the mood for the album; it’s just a short segment of amplifier, of which I have heard better from other bands who specialize in it. The next thing immediately following the introductory title track is the bubbling sound of a bong rip at the start of “Marijuanaut’s Theme”, which dives headfirst into a dense fog of slow, low, Sabbath-esque bass guitar riffage that hardly subsides until the end of the album. I will say I enjoy the way the bass takes center stage on this song in full distorted, form doing more than just ride below the drums. It allows for the song’s rhythmic backbone to become its highlight.

The third track, “Sonic Titan” brings the slow guitar riffs in classic Iommi fashion, and for the first half of its twelve minites, the guitar shines in its retro distortion (and flanger effects) as the primary focus of the song. Sleep perform their ritualistic Sabbath worship fairly well, certainly better than most others contributing to the genre do for the most part, but though this they play into the typicality of constantly paying homage to Black Sabbath that has held stoner doom back as a stagnant genre for its long existence. It’s probably the most unapologetic Sabbath-worship on the album in its musicality, but Sleep don’t fall quite as deep into pure mimicry as other bands often do.

“Antarcticans Thawed” is a sprawling indulgence in the sustenance of the buzz-saw distortion through the amplifiers with the slow monk-esque chanting vocal style bringing the most attentive draw. It’s a much more drone-y moment on the album, and though it’s no done poorly, I’m left thinking of bands who have chosen to specialize in this and how much this doesn’t match up. The solo ten minutes in breaks the monotony, but for how poorly wedged into the song it is and how undeserving such a stumbling solo is to be the climax of the song, it becomes a detriment.

Leading with a quiet, but pretty worthily trippy bass line soon highlighted over by guitar in tribute to Black Sabbath’s bassist, “Giza Butler” opens much like something on Mastodon’s Crack the Skye or Blood Mountain might, and into an andante weed circle ritual narration riddled with palm-muted grooves and wavering bass vibrato. It’s probably the most interesting song for me on the album in terms of its overall structure arch, even if it does contain the forward indulgent line “marijuana is his light and his salvation”, along with numerous predictable references to smoke in lungs and passing of blunts. Nevertheless it is a uniquely un-Sabbath-y song on the album, and a breath of fresh air for that alone.

The album’s instrumental closing track, “The Botanist”, however, expands on its predecessor’s interplay with guitar and bass in a moody and slightly more dynamic manner. I quite enjoyed the more put-together solo in this song in comparison to the solo on “Antarcticans Thawed”. Despite its strong introduction, it kind of peters out after its solo and ends the album in an unfortunately characteristically unenergetic stoned fashion.

Despite my initial distaste for the album still falling into the usual ruts of stoner doom in many ways, its standout moments have grown on me enough for me to commend it as more than just another attempt at being the modern era’s reincarnation of Black Sabbath, not that Sleep have suffered from that syndrome quite to the extent other bands have, Electric Wizard being a notable example with their recent output, especially last year’s. That being said, this is an album that has its moments, but still exists mostly to set the mood for ritualistic cannabis use, and at that job it surely succeeds. If its moments of lucidity (if you could call them that) are enough to challenge some of the genre’s stereotypes, I don’t know. I imagine Sleep, their fans, and cannabis culture in general probably don’t mind.