Jerusalem

I had heard of Sleep before but it's taken me a lo-o-ong while to listen to any of their stuff and I'm glad I started with "Jerusalem" as this is a good long track combining slacker doom metal with an odd religious vibe courtesy of the strange, doped-out lyrics that mix biblical and marijuana-inspired ecstasy in equal measures. The sound is deep, strong and steely and the drumming is steady, straightforward and sure in direction. About the seventh minute the track becomes tougher, verging on aggression almost, and a chant of a lone prophet figure starts up. The riffing is so tough it could pound wallpaper off and the bass melody just about takes over the lead guitar role in its distinctive detuning.

About the 13th minute, after a brief outburst of lead guitar soloing, the music resumes its constant surge with a stronger, rough-edged vocal. At this point I almost expect an organ to join in but the musicians bravely soldier on with the standard guitar-bass-drums template. They don't disappoint: by repetition, they push on in their loose way. Around the 20th minute, the music abruptly changes to a darker, more dangerous direction and the singing, now reverbed, has an edge of derangement. This passage varies little until the 30th minute when the lead guitar breaks away and follows its own path but the overall music's power is enthralling and I don't notice the monotony much at all.

From then on until the abrupt end, the music is more or less repetitive and looping with near-robotic chanting vocals save for the occasional lead guitar break-out. Although listeners might find this part of the track monotonous, they should consider the intent behind the repetition: the track simulates a religious ritual with transcendence as its aim and that's why it cuts out the way it does - the musicians have been "raptured" into another higher, richer plane of existence - and the rest of us can only watch on and envy them. The monotony also serves to immerse and absorb listeners' attention so through total immersion we can also join Sleep on their journey mentally if not physically and experience transcendence in our heads.

The one thing about "Jerusalem" that really impresses me is the music's deep rhythmic power that must be felt. You take it in and the power travels to all parts and extremities of your body even if you're not wearing headphones. Forget about melody and variety, just go for the music's primal pulsing being. You too will feel transported to another realm!

It's kind of hard not to say what hasn't already been said about this record. Every thing's slow and lethargic. The vocals are as much sung as they are chanted. The guitars are slow, crushing and heavy, the bass is loud, the drums steadily pound away a very stoner-ish beat, and there's a merciless amount of repetition.

Basically, that's what this album consists of. There's nothing particularly subjective about this.. I think most people would agree that this is what the album consists of. The question a reviewer must ask is, is this worth listening to? To buy or not to buy? And that's where everything starts to get subjective, and where I'm not sure what to write.

I guess, from my point, it definitely has it's moments. I've never tried listening to this when stoned but I imagine it would be quite powerful. Nonetheless, music (even stoner stuff like this) shouldn't need drugs to be an enjoyable experience. And that's where this album fails. It is an enjoyable experience, but only for a short time.

It's not like the riffs just suddenly start dropping in quality halfway through the album. If I suddenly start half way through the album (i've got the version that's divided into 6 sections) I'll dig those riffs. While the best riffs (and vocals) are in the first part, the whole album is a solid beast. Everything is straight up Sabbath worship, just slowed down heaps. The solos are simple and melodic, and it's moments there that the rythym section really shines, just creating a really cool wall of noise. Yeah, there's plenty of great moments, but here's where it falls down: It's a 52 minute long stoner song.

I can imagine people going "Well? What the hell did you expect?" And that's true to a degree. But I've had no problem loving Boris's 74 minute long Flood album, or the occaisonal hour long drone piece. The simple thing is, this record fails to excite me, to keep me interested in it. There's some great riffs here, no doubt, but I just can't stay interested. I put the record on, and after about ten minutes I'm tuning out. I can't listen to it all the way through!

I kind of feel that this review has failed. The aim of a review should surely be to go "Buy/Don't Buy this record". I can't really arrive at a recommendation for you all. If the idea of an hour long stoner metal song appeals to you, then by all means get this. Otherwise, download it or don't bother with it. It's as simple as that. There's some great riffs, but it's long for me, to put it as straightforward as possible.

Oh, I'm also cutting the score down a bit for an annoyingly abrupt, obviously digital ending. Wouldn't it have been a better idea for at least some sort of ringing, feeding back kind of coda? Cutting the guitars out was a terrible idea.

If you smoke enough weed it has hallucinogenic effects. The hallucinogenic effects of excessive weed smoking are the concrete experience analogue for this album.

The guitar work on this album is too slow to allow riffs to take shape. Each cord is contextualised as part of the entire composition –which stretches over the horizon both in front of and behind the listener, due to the use of dirge instrumentation and the fact the music is unpunctuated, and has no overriding structure- where the notes loose themselves in half remembered associations, and hazy proximities. Additionally the drums ensure that guitar patterns are dissected and dispersed through off hand punctuation and usurpation of the listener’s attention with fills that sound like the divisions in your brain cracking.

Solos and vocals appear like chimeras from the fog. The tight internal logical of each of their manifestations only serves to underline the vast, unfathomable nature of the guitar music. However, without contextualisation, even these rigid structures cannot help to orientate the listener and reflecting on their appearance, he realises that they are only fleeting reflections in a hall of mirrors and smoke.

Time evaporates. Time is to the listener what colour is to the man who has been blind from birth. It is not a fact; there is no instance of it in his experience. That is not to say the album is not sequential, but it does not deal in beginnings and endings (there are, instead, appearings and disapearings), and there is no point in gazing at the horizon.

The listener is free to participate as fully or as little in the album as their subconscious dictates. None the less, there can be no escaping the conditioning process exposure to the music will have on the listener’s mind. Consequently, leaving and returning to the music is inevitable, and this process is mirrored in the technique variations of the music. Oftentimes different parts of the consciousness will experience this process in a disconnected manner, and again, they will be mirrored in this by the disappearing and reappearing of individual instruments and techniques from the music.

******

Giving this album marks for attaining a fraction of some sort of (heavy metal) musical ideal seems slightly ridiculous. As art, it is real and complete. Still, mark it I must, and so the rating I give it I have based on its merits as a piece of music aside form its identity as art.
In order to experience this album in the above manner, headphones and complete darkness are advisable. Intoxicants are not necessary, and do not enhance the experience, at least, not for me.

Depending on your taste in music, this could be either one of your favorite albums or one of the albums you despise the most... personally, as denoted by the rating, I enjoy it. Heck, I enjoy it a great deal!

I'm not gonna regurgitate the stories I've heard surrounding this album about how Sleep pissed off their record labels, about how they smoked so much pot they became born-again Christians (read it somewhere else, very interesting stuff)... I will just state that Sleep's integrity is undebateable.

Okay. So this is some of the most stonerish, doomiest metal there is. It sounds exactly like 70s era Black Sabbath, just about 5 times slower. The riffs and solos don't sound too far removed from Tony Iommi's style. The bass sounds like Geezer. Well, I must admit the drummer far outclasses Bill Ward, but the fact remains: these guys enjoyed Sabbath, and there is massive Sabbath influence to be found here. So if you hate Sabbath for some reason, stop reading. You're not going to enjoy this album one bit.

What we have here is ONE doomy song that plods on for about 52 minutes... but don't expect very much diversity here. All in all, I'd estimate that there are fewer than 10 riffs here. Alot of them sound the same! There is a few minutes toward the end of the song where the guitar plays a clean passage, but thats it. Thats all the diversity to be found here. The other 50 minutes is fucking metal and nothing else. And these guys don't like to rush things...

The vocals are pretty much one rough tone for the entire song... if monotone vocals annoy you, don't worry. The singing makes up a very small percentage of the music here. This is mostly instrumental in execution. If THAT bothers you, I will have to ask you to close your browser. Jerusalem will be TORTURE for you to listen to.

The lyrical theme here, while not too important, is pretty interesting. Sleep wrote a handful of lyrics connecting old time Christian and Jewish settings with marijuana.

Personally, I love this album. I can just throw Jerusalem on, and minutes later I feel like I'm plodding along in a desert. I don't know why, but that's just the atmosphere this album creates.... kinda just want to chill out and enjoy stuff when this is playing and pretend I'm some Jawa or something. Makes for really interesting dreams when I fall asleep listening to it. If you like Sabbath and you like simple music and you like to chill out, I totally recommend this album!