The Sciences

The Sciences may not be as daring and ambitious as Dopesmoker, but it finds Sleep working at the top of their game in the studio, and their resinous howl is still a weird marvel to behold.

To the sober ear, the drawn-out chugging riffs, which are the foundation of the band's sound, come off as stretched and border dangerously on the verge of repetition. But stoned, those riffs are ploughing the fields of your mind, pulling you into a deep hypnotic state washing everything away with rich distortion.

The album is, in the purest and most straightforward sense, a logical and hugely satisfying progression for Sleep and a very worthy follow-up to their previous work.

The essential trick of The Sciences—and the reason it feels like more than an overdue cash-in—is these 40something dudes have managed to grow up without growing old. Their minds are still focused on weed and the escape that it offers, but that’s just the gag; these riffs, rhythms, and the mantra-like singing of Al Cisneros are a drug unto themselves, evidence of a band that’s improved upon their animating idea.

The group seem rejuvenated with a long road ahead of them, something no one could have expected prior to this release. Further, it confirms why they are considered the greatest stoner doom band of all time, one of doom metal’s greatest treasures, one of metal’s biggest crossover acts in the broader underground musical world, and one of the greatest heavy rock bands to roam the planet.

The Sciences is good because, unlike a lot of music influenced by Black Sabbath, it distills the greatest aspects of Sabbath and presses them on into infinity: the huge riffs, the psychedelic backdrops, the wayfaring solos.

With freight-train heavy riffs so indebted to Sabbath's Tony Iommi that he should get royalties, trippy lyrics about diverse subjects such as weed, ganja and pot, and endless groove for days on each of their songs, they've made an album that sounds exactly how Sleep should sound in 2018.

After splitting up in disillusion over the London affair, Al Cisneros’s crew reconvened in 2009 for sporadic activity, and have customarily not rushed into nailing The Sciences, nor departed from their rubric of Burroughsian ganja myth-spinning ... set to eardrum-busting, down-tuned slo-mo jams.

Stoner metal titan Sleep makes a hell of a comeback with The Sciences, which encompasses both the band's classic sound and influences from the members' other creative endeavors over the past 15 years.

In case it was ever in question, The Sciences reclaims Sleep’s legacy after all these years of hibernation.

Hopefully the second stage of Sleep's recording career will continue to be as monumental as the first. Either way, "The Sciences" is a home run.