It would be damn near impossible to explain just how much I love Sleep and just how much this album blew me away the first time I heard it. I can remember the first notes of the record, the lead in riff to "Dragonaut" with the airy punch of a tube amp on 10 and the fuzzy, deep, resonant tone of a thunderous monster awoken. It's a landmark recording for the stoner/desert rock genre, but it's also just a damn great album. It lacks the slow plodding of Electric Wizard and the growl of Bongzilla, but it is big on tone and simple, Sabbathy riffs.
This was sent in to Earache as a demo tape and they signed the band on hearing it and put it out as they got it - simple and rough and god damn beautiful.
The video for "Dragonaut" is awesomely representative of the band, with its black-and-white presentation and jamming-in-a-garage esthetic. Everyone is so into their own thing, I'm not sure if anyone even looks at the camera.
The rest of the record is also stellar, with the standouts for me being "The Druid", "Aquarian", Holy Mountain" and "Inside the Sun", but really, every track is fantastic with Matt Pike and Al Cisnero's thunderous tones and Chris Haikus' incredibly varied and hammering drums.
"Aquarian" is a great representation of Sleeps simple, pounding riffs and kiiller tone, spaced-out vocals and definite Sabbath leanings. It's one of my fav's on the record and one of their best live - especially as its a good, slow headbanging track, perfect for the stoners and a great relaxing to just chill hard to with some heavy rock.
You could probably tell that I'm a huge fan of Sleep from the fact that I have a separarte blog dedicated to the live bootlegs which I have been collecting for sometime. There's a few tracks from this period on the live boots that were never released on an original studio LP and its a damn shame as they are truely killer tracks - "Hot Lava Man" and "Sonic Titan". Download the 10/17/1992 and 2/21/1992Gilman boots for both.
This version is the Kreation Records repress that came out in 2007 which I picked up from Zion's Gate Records in Seattle, WA - home of Kreation Records! They also had a vinyl copy of Sleep's Volume One album for something like $150 - which I had to pass on, but damn, it's seriously tempting...
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