Easton Connell

On 4/20 this year the shamans of stoner metal released their first new LP in a solid twenty years. Sleep’s ensuing tour has taken them around the world and last week it brought them to familiar territory at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater. After weeks of trying to talk myself out of going, I scrambled at the last minute to travel by bus down to the bay area and see these mythic musicians in the flesh. I made it to The Warfield just in time to hear the end of “Mirror Reaper” blasting through the walls, the hour-long song that makes up opener Bell Witch’s latest album. The song’s final brutal howls in the face of the Great Beyond died into feedback as I found my friends and found my way to the floor of the theater.

In the wake of Bell Witch, there’s no music over the house speakers. No DJ to ease the transition while the roadies break down and set up. The feedback that “Mirror Reaper” faded into persists, a low-level fuzz quietly seething at the back of your brain. After awhile it’s slowly replaced by a periodic squawk and crunchy voices speaking. When I notice that the beep sounds at regular intervals I start paying attention to the voices. It’s an old radio transmission, something from the NASA archive. Maybe the famous descent of Apollo 11, or maybe a re-entry from the early days of the Mercury missions. I’m not sure but I can tell that it’s counting down. Houston, we are beginning descent. 400 meters and dropping. 300 meters. 200 meters. When landing is imminent, a bearded silhouette crosses the stage, followed by another figure mounting the throne behind the drums, and lastly the infamously shirtless Matt Pike. Sleep has entered The Warfield. Amid the cheers, Matt Pike tests a chord and smiles, almost as if he knows something we don’t.

The opening chords of “Marijuanaut’s Theme” explode from the wall of Orange amplifiers behind the band. I’m thrown back by the volume, almost literally. The napkins I stuffed in my ears at the last minute might as well not be there. It’s a full-on sonic assault. I don’t just hear the music, I feel it in every fiber of my body. Pounding, pulsing, taking over. I spark a joint as my whole body thrums with the force of the song. Halfway through the joint, only a little way into the first song, something clicks into place. I lose track of the simple fact of being at a show at The Warfield. I’m hurtling through the galaxy at a ponderous ninety beats per minute. My heart beat is absorbed in the beat of the Theme. My whole world is absorbed in the music. There is no me. I have no body. There is no crowd. There is no head banging along. There is only the riff.

“Marijuanaut’s Theme” ends with its startling abruptness and the relentless drone of “Holy Mountain” picks up where it left off. Standing with eyes closed as the song washes over me, I am the dreamer awakened to the spectral gaze of light rays shining. The darkness framing the stage is the black steed carrying us all across the astral sand. We are the Sonic Titans riding out on clouds of new horizon. Or dense clouds of cannabis fumes, as the case may be.

The percussive fuzz of the beginning of “The Clarity” fills the chasm left by the cataclysmic climax of “Holy Mountain.” The evening’s journey into the void continues with its attendant thunder. I stand in the crowd at the epicenter of the storm and surrender to the maelstrom. It’s not just that I’m prodigiously stoned. I think that when you’re exposed to this kind of sustained volume for an extended period of time your brain begins to do weird things. Add to that riffs that congealed in a heady stew of equal parts indica, sativa, and Sabbath worship and you can begin to try to understand the experience – the members of Sleep have tapped into a musical expression that exists in the same plane as the burning bush, the bodhi tree, the cave outside Mecca.

The blistering opening of “Sonic Titan” floods the room. With the release of The Sciences I was eager to hear a studio version after years of listening to the live recording on Dopesmoker. Transmitted live it dwarfs any possible recording of it. Its riff thickens the atmosphere in The Warfield with the relentless advance of a glacier, the intentionality of a monk deep in kinhin.

Each time Sleep pauses for a moment to silently tune their guitars it’s like suddenly breaking through the surface, lungs heaving as I gasp for air and the solidity of reality. Right – I’m in a venue. There are people here. I have a body. And then the next song begins and it’s like a switch is flipped. The effect is immediate – there’s no easing back into their zone, there’s only the immediate teleportation to the dimension of the weedians.

The green lights exhaling from the stage rotate downwards and become red columns of coagulated light. They change from the green path in Heimdal’s rainbow bridge to the weapon of countless Darths, a symbol of darkness and aggression. The seething riff of “Aquarian” overtakes me, and I find myself resisting it. A salmon swimming upstream, a moth hopelessly fighting the urge to sink into the flame. For a moment I feel the Fear lurking in the shadows, but then the verse erupts and I lose myself in submission to the void. The break towards the end of the song becomes playful and bluesy, it feels almost like the noodling of americana’s great guitarists. A thought flashes into my head – perhaps this is how people who are really into the Dead feel when they see the Dead. The thought makes me laugh out loud – people think a Dead show is a psychedelic experience? I remember my first reaction to hearing about the famous Wall of Sound: “….and they used it for that?” There are many roads to god, and Sleep sits higher on the mountain than most.

The hypnotizing opening of “Giza Butler” brings me out of myself and back into the show, the tendrils of its bass riff curling around my mind like wisps of smoke or the stroking arms of an extradimensional cephalopod. The religiosity of the evening is foregrounded by this song with its meditative chord structure and its lyrics about the Iommic pentecost. The riff tree is risen. The bong is to live in. Salutations to the cultivators.

“The Botanist” roars into life in the wash of feedback that signals the end of “Giza Butler.” “The Botanist” feels a bit like The Cure’s injection of “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep” into the cheery sensibility of the a-side of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. It’s a beautiful song and anchors the record in a way that demands your attention. I can see why the band sequenced “Giza Butler” and “The Botanist” side by side at the end of The Sciences.

Al Cisneros announces that they have one song left. The crowd is unsure how to react, wanting to cheer for one more song but also collectively missing a step with the realization that the ritual will soon come to an end. After a moment, the acidic blues of the opening riff of “Dragonaut” chugs out over the crowd and we all roar with approval. The relative simplicity of the lick winds things down to a more processable level. The crowd is a sea of heads nodding slowly in time to the riff until the inevitable drop-off to the verse. As Matt Pike’s guitar strides over Al Cisneros’ cosmic pronouncements, a sea of fists raises into the air as one and the crowd punctuates each line with the staccato shaking of our hands. I’ve always thought “Dragonaut” is the most accessible of Sleep’s songs and in this moment I find it remarkably grounding. I’m still flying across the known universe on the back of a weed-breathing dragon, but now I can at least make out familiar constellations.

After a brief time off stage, Sleep returns. The tell-tale feedback cycles in followed by that famous opening note, sliding up and down the lowest string on Matt Pike’s guitar. “Dopesmoker” swirls into life and I feel at home in the whirlwind. The stage is awash with green lights. The people in front of me have left and thankfully I’m able to lean against a barricade with a friend. Standing there in the depths of the sonic barrage, exhausted, hungry, dehydrated and sore, rapturous and transfixed, I feel like a pilgrim. Circumambulating the shrine, riding the dragon toward the crimson eye. The ritual, the unity, the shared hum, the group hypnosis. It occurs to me that this may be my first genuinely religious experience.

It’s not just spiritual. It’s not just psychedelic. It’s a group moment. Perhaps it’s the religious overtones of some of the songs, the biblical references, the cannabis-based cosmology of the lyrics. It feels like more than just a private vision of ultimate reality. This is Saul being called out on the road to Damascus. I see my true self ahead of me. I don’t just feel the hope of surmounting the ever-present obstacles along the path, I know the surety of never-ending growth and renewal. Between the Hermit of Al Cisneros and the Magician of Matt Pike I see the path to truth laid at my feet. I will not resist.

This is why people go to church, I think. Snakehandlers, speakers of tongues, I get it now. This is rapture. This is grace. This is Sleep melting the fuck out of my face.

 

Reflecting on the show in the bleak light of the BART train, it was hard to put into words. The elements all made sense on their own but the sum of their parts was an experience numinous and ineffable. The Chariot that is Sleep is Wholly Other. I looked around at the faces of my friends on the train and I see that I’m not alone.

It was overwhelming. It was utterly transportive. It was intense in the way that peaking on mushrooms is intense.

It was magic. Witchy, shamanic, full on out of body astral travelling across the cosmos magic.

It was SLEEP.