If you are a fan of poppy melodies, catchy hooks and singalong choruses then best move along as you aren’t going to find much in the way of sunshine vibes on Sleep’s long awaited new album, The Sciences. The opening title track is nothing more than a three minute salvo of screeching feedback and some toggle switch juggling from Matt Pike’s guitar before the unmistakable sound of someone pulling a colossal bong rip cuts through the sonic soup.
Opening track proper “Marijuanauts Theme” then kicks the back doors with doom laden stoner sludge and Sabbath worship that oozes out the speakers at a crawling primordial pace.
The Sciences is a truly massive sounding album that gives off the vibe that it was recorded at utterly crushing volumes by large, intensely stoned, shirtless men in a hot sweaty basement somewhere probably because in all likelihood it most probably was.
Quite a few of these tracks have been kicking around for quite a number of years in various forms and are instantly recognisable to anyone who has seen the band play live. Indeed even the feedback track “The Sciences” is the way that the band has been opening shows since at least 2007/2008.
Its not all gravy though, there are a few moments of butt clenchingly pie lyrics, Al Cisneros shouting some bollocks about Pterodactyls flying overhead is quite patently ridiculous but pretty much expected from folks who smoke this much weed i guess.
Stoner rock as a genre is a pretty loose catch all that ranges from poppy, rock riffing like Kyuss or Nebula, all the way through caustic downtuned chugging like Weedeater or Acid King. The Sciences is definitely at the more seething end of the scale and takes a scenic route through the best work of Blue Cheer, St Vitus, or Black Sabbath (duh). Giant chundering riffs, bowel loosening bass and drums that sound like they are being played with hammers all come together to deliver the album that Sleep have long been threatening to make.
Grab a slice because The Sciences absolutely crushes everything else in its path.
Brilliant stuff x