The unbeatable heaviness of Sleep

Through 11 years in Nashville, I had never seen a show at Third Man Records Blue Room. In the early days, they announced shows through Twitter or people had to stand in line for long hours to acquire tickets, so I quickly learned not to bother.

Something curious popped into my Facebook feed – doom/stoner metal band Sleep planned a Third Man show, with a ticket pre-sale for Sleep’s Facebook followers. Suddenly Third Man seemed accessible.

The last time Sleep passed through Nashville, I was caught flat-footed. I waited for tickets and they sold out weeks before the show. This time I pounced and grabbed a ticket. The Third Man show sold out immediately.

Tickets rarely look like this anymore.

This was not always the case. Six years ago, I saw OM, Sleep bassist Al Cisneros’ more mystical offshoot, at the Mercy Lounge with maybe 40 other people. Although I listened to Sleep in high school, a new generation embraced their Sabbath-influence doom metal as their albums became more reached a wider audience.

From the outside, only the tour bus gave away any hint of a rock show within Third Man Records. A short line led into the record company’s little venue. The Blue Room is relatively small but comfortable, with disorienting floors that curve into the blue walls, real and artistic animal heads posted on the walls and old area rugs on the floor.

The biggest oddity is in the corner of the stage, where TMR employees in white lab coats recording and cut acetates of the concerts played a few feet away. Rules were a little different for the live recording – because TMR cuts the acetate during the actual show, they build in some long pauses to ready a new acetate. Neither band or crowd seemed to mind. The Blue Room billowed with smoke, unsurprising given the band’s proclivity for all things marijuana.

Recordings of NASA chatter with astronauts played while the stage was bathed in green light.  Soon the trio emerged and wasted no time in launching their sonic assault. Most of the songs follow a slow-burning pattern (no pun intended), heavy riffs, even deeper bass and occasional blasts of soloing from guitarist Matt Pike. The set-up is simple – Cisneros on Rickenbacker bass, Pike with his Les Paul and drummer Jason Roeder on a barebones cut that he hammered for more than two hours.

The night opened with Leagues Beneath, a non-album single released this summer. "Single" is relative with Sleep, as the song thunders across the 15-minute mark and easily filled a side of the future live album.

Then crunched the opening chords of Dopesmoker, the infamous single-song record that their label rejected and led Sleep to break up. Now it’s become a cult classic. Sleep did not play the full 60-minute version but enough to occupy almost two full sides of vinyl.

As the shortened Dopesmoker wound down, the roar of Sonic Titan brought hit another sludgy peak. The band veered back to non-album tracks with The Clarity, then settled into playing large chunks of Sleep’s Holy Mountain and their surprise 2018 album The Sciences.

Before Sleep crossed the two-hour mark, this Nashville crowd did what Nashville crowds do – it thinned out. Since this is likely to be my last Nashville concert, I almost enjoyed seeing the phenomena occur one more time, even at a show that sold out almost immediately.

As usual, the early departures missed out. Giza Butler opened with an appropriate Middle Eastern vibe reminiscent of OM. Interplay with Pike’s guitar and wah-wah pedal emerges before a steamroller of power chords ushers in the vocals.

Where Sleep sleeps on tour

After six sides, it appeared the night might be running out. But Sleep journeyed on with The Botanist, the heavier-than-heaven instrumental that closes The Sciences. After that slab of riffing, Sleep jumped into the slightly funky intro to Dragonaut, the lead song on Holy Mountain.

In the near future TMR plans to release this seven-sided performance. Massive as that album will be, it won’t touch the heaviness of the riffs Sleep unleashed for the small crowd in the Blue Room.