SLEEP Volume One LP

SLEEP Volume One LP

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(Very Small Recording Company / Tupelo Records)
*** This is a new and unplayed item, direct from the CRUCIAL BLAST shop. ***

DESCRIPTION FROM CRUCIAL BLAST:
      Finally got this early 90s drug-metal classic back in stock. First released back in 1991, Sleep's eponymous debut album arrived not long after the San Jose band first came together, rising from the still-smoldering ashes of their previous outfit Asbestos Death. And much like that band, Sleep pursued a lumbering, tar-encrusted brand of heaviness that was heavily indebted to both the slo-mo miseries of classic Black Sabbath and the filthiest strains of hardcore punk. With Sleep, however, the quartet of bassist / vocalist Al Cisneros, drummer Chris Hakius, and guitarists Matt Pike and Justin Marler shaped their music into something darker and more narcotized; while the sound of this LP is a little different from the monolithic drug-doom that they would produce a few years later with Dopesmoker/Jerusalem, the raw material is all here. Featuring album art from the renowned Bay Area anti-establishment artist John Yates, this eight-song Lp has pretty much all of the elements that would define Sleep's sound in place: a druggy, liturgical atmosphere that materialized via chantlike vocals and sinister throat-drones, intricately interlocking drumming, molten Sabbathoid riffs and evil guitar solos, all pulled down into the darkest and most dreadful depths of classic doom metal.
      Newcomers to the album might be surprised by how much variety there is: opener "Stillborn" bulldozes over your with a monstrous saurian riff and weird, narcotized vocals, but then some furious quasi-hardcore tempos stir up the muck on "The Suffering", juxtaposed against the song's crawling, angular riffage. There's some jazzy rhythmic interplay on the songs "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream" and "Catatonic" that foreshadows what Cisneros and Hakius would later explore with their post-Sleep band Om, bringing added complexity to the lava-thick riffs. And on "Wall Of Yawn", the band gets downright proggy, shifting from a furious funky backbeat to lead-plated sludgemetal crush to some winding, jagged instrumental arrangements that suggests that these guys might have been rolling at least a few of their joints on top of old King Crimson LPs. There's a raw, spiteful, sour quality to much of Volume One, and it's definitely an uglier and more abrasive record than what you'd hear later with their penultimate weed-metal epic Dopesmoker. But this is still one of the more seminal slabs of slow-motion metal from the early 90s, essential listening for anyone remotely interested in stoned-out, terminally negative heaviness. Includes a download code.   © CRUCIAL BLAST
THIS IS A NEW, UNPLAYED ITEM. Please note that for LP vinyl orders, we usually remove the vinyl from the jacket prior to shipment in order to avoid seam splits or any other kind sleeve/jacket damage that might occur during transit. This may require that we open the shrinkwrap on the record in order to carefully remove the vinyl from the inside of the jacket (if the record was originally shrinkwrapped). Feel free to contact us with any questions regarding this policy.

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