SLEEP - Sleep Holy Mountain

Perhaps to some of you the name Sleep doesn’t say much, but I think Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius should be familiar from the more recent Om and Shrinebuilder, and Matt Pike for his activity with High on Fire. If those still don’t ring a bell, no problem, this album is a good starting point to familiarise yourselves to the three heroes of stoner metal, and, why not, with their other bands.

Drawing their inspiration equally from the traditional doom of Black Sabbath and Saint Vitus, but aided in their quest by copious amounts of weed/ ganja or whatever you want to call it, Sleep is one of the few bands of the 90s that have really managed to leave their mark on the genre, despite the low number of releases and relatively short existence. But perhaps it’s better this way, to paraphrase Klawz who said a while ago that if Judas Priest had only released their good songs we would have had a lot of excellent EPs from them. This is not the case of Sleep, who, same as The Obsessed and Pentagram, have launched few materials, let’s say they somehow felt what songs were worth releasing and are now regarded as classics.

On this album - Sleep's Holy Mountain, the band invites for nearly an hour to step into the land of psychedelic doom that would make any fan of the early Black Sabbath days with Ozzy on the vocals, but also any fan of Saint Vitus, to cry tears of joy and claim that Sleep is the missing link to a wider vision of the genre. It is a bit like Star Wars (if I may); you’ve got Black Sabbath pre-Ronnie James Dio, the underrated Saint Vitus, The Obsessed,  Bobby Liebling’s Pentagram and Kyuss and if you feel you still need something to make the story complete, Sleep come and give you a pair of sunglasses so you can keep chilling and enjoy the state of mind and the spirit preached by Black Sabbath and the other bands many years before.

Looking at the lyrics, at a first glance the songs on Sleep's Holy Mountain resemble either a joke or sci-fi-scented paranoia, and to prove this point I present exhibit A, Dragonaut:

Ride the dragon toward the crimson eye

Flap the wings under Mars red sky

The reptile pushes itself out into space

Leaving behind, the human race 

Holy Mountain:

Slumber killed by rays of the new red sun arising

Dreamer wakens to spectral gaze of light rays shining

Black steed carries him across the astral sand

Rides alone is the man from the magic caravan 

Or Inside the Sun:

Travelling toward the atomic sky

Passing through the wall of light we fly

To the center of the sun we go

Discovering secrets no one else has known

Within the center of the galaxy

Away from Earth and all its misery

Well, this is not how you should look at Sleep’s lyrics. If you are familiar with Wino’s The Obsessed, for instance, or with Wino in general, you’ll look at their offering with different eyes. Finally, Sleep's Holy Mountain is a must have and a must listen for any fan of traditional doom, stoner rock or psychedelic rock.

H. Nota: 10