Dopesmoker
The real feat of 1996’s “Dopesmoker” isn’t its glacial heft or athletic, hour-long runtime, but the way it continuously shifts while seeming to stand in place. Though Sleep had grown out of California’s doom- and stoner-rock scene, the San Jose band’s fruits have more in common with religious chant or minimalist composition: steady, deep, inherently psychedelic. And while framing weed as a spiritual pursuit is funny (“Drop out of life with bong in hand”), the album’s overall mood foregrounded a reverence and almost monastic focus implied in heavy music going back to Black Sabbath. From sunn O))) to Boris to the profound voids of bands like The Body, *Dopesmoker* is where modern extreme metal was born.
Remastered audio for metal classic Dopesmoker + included for the first time digitally is the deep cut "Hot Lava Man." Recorded in 1996 and not released (in slightly different edit/mix) until 1999 under the title Jerusalem, the legend and lore behind Dopesmoker would overshadow an LP of any lesser significance. But the 63-minute magnum opus dedicated exclusively to the sacrament of marijuana is not just the pinnacle of the goofily named stoner metal genre…it’s inarguably one of the most important and influential albums of all time.
The saga of Sleep's Dopesmoker was already almost ten years in the making by the time of its belated release in 2003.