Sleep burned their own path in the ‘90s, a San Jose, Calif., trio that worshipped at the altars of Black Sabbath, cannabis and volume. Their sound was singular in its ambition, as slow, ominous and inexorable as a molton-lava flow. It demanded deliberation – the slower the better -- and was spacious enough for meditation and head-banging.
The band defined a fringe segment of metal known as “stoner rock,” then fragmented in 1998 after an ambitious, album-length metal suite, “Dopesmoker” (later retitled “Jerusalem”), was rejected by its record label. Since then, Sleep’s reputation has grown exponentially, and the trio’s first visit to Chicago in more than a decade Thursday was greeted by a capacity audience at the Logan Square Auditorium.
While some fans complained to the sound engineer that the volume wasn’t sufficiently ear-splitting, the mix presented a clear picture of the band’s interaction: Matt Pike’s long, reverberating guitar chords, Al Cisneros’ nimble bass, and Jason Roeder’s free-form drumming. The traditional rock hierarchy of lead instruments didn’t apply; each instrumentalist assumed the lead role at times, and Pike frequently laid out lingering chords to give Cisneros’ bass room to roam or Roeder's drums to surge through.
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Guitarist Matt Pike can laugh about it now. In the ‘90s, his band Sleep made “Dopesmoker,” an album so radical that it got the trio kicked off their record label, led to their break-up, and yet ended up becoming one of the most acclaimed metal releases of the last two decades.
“We made a record that people didn’t get to hear until years later, after we broke up,” says Pike, who has spent the last decade fronting the power trio High on Fire. “We had a bigger following than ever, and no band! It’s like, where was everybody when we were actually touring?”
That situation is being rectified with a reunion of Pike and original Sleep bassist-singer-lyricist Al Cisneros, plus Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder, to perform a handful of shows devoted to the California trio’s influential ‘90s albums, particularly the 1993 “Holy Mountain,” the career-ending “Dopesmoker,” and its shorter but equally daunting companion piece, “Jerusalem.”
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