Sleep: Volume One [TUPELO]

Why you'll love it

This reissue comes with a download card and brings Volume One back to vinyl after years out of print. It's the one Sleep album with original guitarist Justin Marler alongside Matt Pike, Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius.

This edition

• Download card included

About the album

Long before stoner metal had a name to put on the shop divider, Sleep were already slowing everything down. Not long after forming from the remains of Asbestosdeath, the band headed into Razor's Edge studios with Billy Anderson recording, and came out with a heavier, darker record than anything they would make later, steeped in doom and sludge.

Matt Pike's guitar and Al Cisneros's bass and vocals lock in with Chris Hakius's drums, while Justin Marler adds a second guitar and voice. "The Suffering" and "Anguish" are re-recorded Asbestosdeath songs, "Numb" and "Catatonic" grind at a glacial pace, and "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream" and "The Wall of Yawn" stretch out with real sludge-metal weight before "Prey" closes. The cover borrows Salvador Dalí's painting Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon, which suits the mood nicely.

Marler left in the fall of 1991 to become an Orthodox monk, which as reasons for leaving a band go is very hard to top. Pike, Cisneros and Hakius carried on as a trio, and Volume One remains the place to hear where it all started, raw and very, very slow.

Also at Kops: more Sleep on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Tupelo Recording Company (cat# TUP34), a reissue of the 1991 album.