Huge news for the bonglords and psychonauts out there: stoner metal legends Sleep have released their first new album in twenty years on the most appropriate day of the year. Yes, folks – I’m talking about the weed day itself, April 20.
The Sciences – featuring truly wonderful track titles like Marijuanaut’s Theme and Antarcticans Thawed – is the first LP release from the band since 1998’s Dopesmoker, which is considered a seminal heavy metal album and consistently sits near the top of Metacritic‘s list of all-time top albums due to its nearly universally positive reviews.
And yes, The Sciences is extremely riffy. This I can confirm.
That last album consists mostly of a single monster-length title track which has no doubt been the soundtrack to more hazy seshes than possibly any other album in history.
Sleep are perhaps best known in recent Australian memory for dumping their planned tour of the country thanks to sexual misconduct allegations against local metal promoter Dave Cutbush of Life is Noise.
The band released a new song back in 2014. In an interview at the time, they said that they were working on new material. “Sleep has been sporadically writing riffs for a while now,” they told NPR. “There is no preconceived idea of what the new material should be. It would be an amalgamated effort of decades of riff immersion.”
So if you’re keen to turn on, tune in and drop out right at your office desk, hit up The Sciences on the streaming service on your choice.
