Sleep – Hempispheres

Review by

Sean Caldwell

Sean is a music writer based in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. He first contributed to No Ripcord in 2008, and has been writing about music at Letters From A Tapehead since 2006.

On June 18th, a track titled “Have Spacesuit Will Travel (4:20 Flexi Edit)” slipped into the virtuasphere as an announcement that Sleep, prominent heads of stoner metal’s vanguard, was carrying on without founding member and co-author of the band’s sound, guitarist Matt Pike. Comments sections expectedly bore reception of the news and the track itself provided confirmation for the ears that Sleep’s sound had changed enough that the question it ultimately posed was, “Without Pike, is this really Sleep?”

For this new iteration of Sleep, Al Cisneros, bassist, vocalist, and now sole founding member, has tagged drummer Dale Crover (Melvins, Nirvana) and guitarist Jon “Bubba” Dupree (Void). The resultant album, Hempispheres, commits to Cisneros’ unwavering allegiance to Tony Iommi (“Two worlds collide on Iommic ground”), while built out with the evocative sonic hallmarks of acid-baked blues and proto-metal acts like Cactus, Deep Purple, and Hawkwind. While 2018’s The Sciences, Sleep’s last LP with Pike and drummer Jason Roeder (also of Neurosis), hinted that the band had become more of a hypnotic force than they’d been for their single-track planet smasher of an LP, 2003’s Dopesmoker, Hempispheres takes another step toward that ethereal spacewalk, mixing drone, doom, and doob with more spiritually-tinged ideas not too far removed from Om, the project helmed by Cisneros and currently aided by drummer Emil Amos (Grails) and multi-instrumentalist Tyler Trotter. As the hemisphere exists as two halves of a planetary body, Hempispheres could arguably exist as a direct culmination of Cisneros’s dual perspectives: the so-called Weedian, suited as hookah-toking spacemen, either mired in a deluge of metallic sludge or captivated by celestial and metaphysical drift.

Admittedly, the prospect of a Sleep record sans one of its vital personnel carried more uncertainty than excitement, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel (4:20 Flexi Edit)” underwhelming upon initial listen and lacking the expected ear-exploding weight a Sleep record would normally struggle to contain. Cisneros’ vocals had shifted from growl to chant, a flattened sermon-style he’d adopted and successfully used throughout The Sciences without diminishing the group’s trademark intensity. That said, without Pike’s serrated walls of tone, the track was missing something. Noting the pedigrees of Crover and Dupree, one being a sludge metal bona fide and the other a veteran of DC’s hardcore scene, there should’ve been at least a match in volume. 

But, this is listener error. 

The unedited version of “Have Spacesuit Will Travel” is the album’s opener, an extra three-minutes tacked on, two of which are spent on an extended intro. There is a relative calm that precedes the song’s real beginning, Crover and Cisneros riffing a bit before the six-string makes its mark, the rhythm locking in before Cisneros begins to sing, “To beyond the farthest star/From earth now disembark/Stoned/Calibrates for deep space.” Winding fuzz tones and rock soloing bring on thoughts of yesteryear, bloodshot meditations enhanced by dusty rock ’n’ roll being drawn from a warped platter by a dirty stylus. By the following track, “The Morrisist,” mud-caked low end pushed to the front overtop faint and minimal guitar stabs, it’s apparent that Hempispheres is Sleep’s Silver Machine: quasar-decor’d hard rock psychedelia for the “cannabis allegiant,” a new detour taken during their departure from Holy Mountain. It’s still heavy, just not gargantuan. 

The ensuing title track confirms enough, Kyuss-similar desert guitar tones pushed into a chugging and charred battery of bell-punctuated low end, moving like a revved generator pulsing in a barren, sunlit expanse. Crover is mesmerising here, a patient groove anchoring Cisneros’s prevalent rubs and Dupree’s guitar heroics, an extended outro giving the trio room to ride. 

Arrival Of The Industry Ships is the album’s longest, and perhaps dirtiest, offering, pace initially set to “crawl” as if unable to yank its feet from its own blues jam. “Hashteroid outpost echoes radar omens the incoming,” Cisneros narrates. “Steel column bearing down eclipses crimson eye.” It’s worth pointing out that a Hempispheres comic book is being released alongside this album, potentially offering a visual companion to Cisneros’ world building. “Arrival…” runs its course without much by way of deviation, leading to the album’s closing track, the excellently titled “Whole Wheat Mountain Well Baked,” a midpoint shift in volume gradually softening as the trio eventually finish up. 

While it’s understandable that Pike’s exit will keep sceptics sceptical, and that Cisneros’ efforts were different enough to warrant this project a new name, as opposed to Sleep Lite or Om Grown, the quality of Hempispheres stands well enough to rate as a solid crossover work, leaving the depth-charged ruins of Dopesmoker and the following orbit of The Sciences behind, finding new planetary matter to dig into.

Hempispheres is out now via Third Man Records.