★★★★★
A friend and former RapReviews contributor caught my eye with a tweet the other day: "A lot of times I'll read
a writer's work and I think 'Are you reviewing the music or just part
of the hype the label/publicist delivered?'" When you're inundated
with a few dozen albums at a time (more digital than physical these
days), it's hard to NOT look at a press release and think
"Can YOU sell me on this album before I listen to it...
- rapreviews.com
2014-03-25
★★★★★
In the smoke-filled longhouses of metal, no song is as shrouded in legend or reeks as much of burning ambition than Sleep's "Dopesmoker". The 63-minute, weed-fuelled odyssey was to have comprised the entirety of Sleep's first album in a new deal with London Records in 1996. However, when the label's executives baulked at releasing such a grandiose, multifaceted epic, Sleep disbanded in a haze of regret and oft-whispered tales...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-07-12
★★★★★
It's often difficult to muster excitement when you know what's going to happen, too, like when an unbound Lionel Messi is passed a football: "Well, he's going to mock physics", says God, chucks his shoulders and ambles off towards the jakes. Much the same thought went through this writer's head as he put on the 'deluxe reissue' of Sleep's Dopesmoker, i.e. '[W]ell, this is going to thrum like a turbine and durng like funeral bells, isn't it...
- thequietus.com
2012-06-21
★★★★★
In the early-'90s metal drought, a strange strain developed through the cracks in the pavement, as downtuned strings, sluggish tempos, and vintage amplification led to the blossoming of stoner rock. A large number of bands cashed in on the genre's fruition with erudite riffage and rad tuneage, but such a cash-in eluded the stump-dragging trogs of Sleep, whose clunky riff-mastery and weed obsession made them the stupidest-sounding smart stoner-metal band around...
- thephoenix.com
2012-06-07
★★★★★
I kind of can't believe Dopesmoker exists. I mean, I know it's real. I've been listening to it for a couple of weeks now. I just can't believe the members of Sleep created and submitted this album to London Records. For a pop-oriented label, Dopesmoker must have seemed pretty far out there. I love it, and even I still kind of see where London was coming from when it refused to release the album...
- www.punknews.org
2012-05-28
★★★★★
Originally released in 2003, following some label issues and prior versions, Dopesmoker is Sleep's final album and a stoner metal classic. The Bay Area band and Southern Lord have now taken up the reins in order to give the record a proper release with this deluxe reissue. It's immediately clear why Sleep's former label, London Records, had a problem with the album, since Dopesmoker contains only one song: a 63-minute ode to, of course, weed...
- exclaim.ca
2012-05-17
★★★★★
In or out of metal's seedy musical ghetto, there are few records as epically conceived or grandly ambitious as Sleep's Dopesmoker. A single-track, hour-plus song about weed composed over four years, it is an enduring curiosity that has been released and re-released several times in the past 13 years, on bootlegs and official albums...
- www.avclub.com
2012-05-17
★★★★★
Three stoned kids walk into an expensive studio with the idea of recording one song that lasts for an hour and opens with the line, "Drop out of life with bong in hand." During the course of the tune, which changes every time they play it, they equate weed with most every sacred religious symbol, take solos that stretch for minutes, and sing in some malevolent half-chant incantation. They won't allow it to be edited for radio play, and they don't want to break it into tracks...
- pitchfork.com
2012-05-10
★★★★★
After a chequered past of unauthorised copies and severely edited versions, Dopesmoker is at last getting a fully endorsed and heralded release. The final album from the stoner legends Sleep before they split into two separate entities, the hour long piece is the ultimate weed anthem, a thick aural haze of smokin' riffs and meditations from the bottom of the bong...
- music.thedigitalfix.com
2012-05-07