Volume One

Volume One is a rarity in Sleep's short catalogue, not only because it is by far the least popular among fans, but also because it is the one that presents the most distant sound from the one that made Sleep relevant. I mean, of course this is still doom metal, but the overall sound is much closer to sludge metal than anything else. The Black Sabbath influences are still present, but there is also worship to Melvins and Black Flag. The hardcore punk influences are at times obvious and noticeable, as in "The Suffering" when the song picks up speed in one of the main segments or in the beginning of "The Wall of Yawn". The main responsible for this is Chris Hakius with one of his most aggressive performances, being the main piece in those fast moments.

The riffage is dark, depressing, lugubrious, there is a sense of unease that accompanies the whole work, reinforced by the aforementioned riffs but taken care of by the whole band, be it vocals, bass or simplistic but devastating rhythmic segments. This is all exemplified through the songwriting, incredibly mature and interesting for such a young band, but they were clear on what they wanted to do, making each song have not only memorable riffs, but also unique sections that give a certain dynamism to a genre that is not known for that kind of performance. The joint vocals fit together perfectly, the dual use of the guitars at times brings a superior power in terms of heaviness to what Sleep would give us in their career, and Cisneros shows one of his first signs of talent on bass.

Despite that, the album can't help but have only one bullet in the chamber, the style throughout the work is the same, of course there are touches to give the songs distinctiveness from each other but it all ends up coming back to the same style over and over again, all the songs are the execution of the same idea and unfortunately the second half is no better than the first so it falls a little bit behind. But this doesn't have to be a bad thing if you like what they do, and luckily the album doesn't tend to be too long so it rarely gets boring, but you have to accept the lack of variety it offers.

Perhaps this flaw is due to the fact that the band, even though they were already clear about parts of their ideas, were not consistent enough to pull out a more creative and deeper work, but they really don't need to, because this is one of those cases where a band's debut is accompanied by a perpetual youthful energy that permeates every second of the album.

Volume One is pure rawness, an album without filters of any kind that has a lot to offer in such a simple format, and that's where much of its greatness and charisma lies. An album dense and dark enough to capture you and never let you escape, as it did with me.

Sleep is a one of the most revered stoner/doom band. Perhaps one of the best out there, even though they haven't released much due to the fact that they split-up and didn't exist for a long time, after the hassle with record labels with their legendary Jerusalem/Dopesmoker. There is no doubt that these guys took the right things out of the Black Sabbath sound, and added an even more twisted, strange and cosmic flavour to it; and you'd probably have to thank weed (not god) for that.

Sleep has released some great shit. Their second full-length 'Sleep's Holy Mountain' is one of the very best stoner/doom metal albums ever conceived, and the long, trippy Jerusalem/Dopesmoker is legendary for a reason: it's fucking awesome, if you're indeed into this type of stuff. The band has made good use of the Sabbath sound without actually becoming a total clone/rip-off. Others have indeed done this, and correctly too, but Sleep are a special band with a very recognizable sound (i.e. Al Cisnero's wobbly bass and chanted/shouted vocals, Matt Pike's monster riffs and Chris Hakius' loose, free-flowing drum-work and his signature "cymbal-riding").

This wasn't always the case, though. Sleep's first full-length called 'Volume One' is an odd one. The album cover is artwork by Salvador Dali. Whether that says a lot about the actual music, is up for debate. I would probably say that it does, because the lyrics and the overall sound are dark, misanthropic, somewhat depressive and even angsty at times; which isn't something you'd normally associate Sleep with. While the lyrics deal with some dark shit, the music itself is very disappointing considering the impressively huge step-up they did for their following album. The music is less Sabbathy and more sludgy and brooding. It's slow and a bit all-over-the-place. This is normal for Sleep, but on 'Volume One', the trio fails to utilize these elements properly, in a similar way that made 'Sleep's Holy Mountain' so damn fucking good. The progressive elements of the band are also lacking a bit. They are indeed incorporating some prog-elements here and there, but instead of surprising the listener with a great change of pace, style or overall mood, it confuses one.

To be fair, though, this isn't a bad album. It's a pretty decent stoner/doom/sludge release, with more emphasis on the dark, misanthropic nature of sludge metal, but with the added "sloppiness" of the hazy jams of stoner and doom metal. Luckily, this was just a dodgy start for Sleep. I'm not sure if they got the name Sleep after or during the recording of this record (they were called Asbestos Death at one point and had a second guitarist called Justin Marler, who may or may not have featured on this record) , because it's a bit long and can be a bit sleep-inducing to the listener. Especially, if you're going Al Cisneros on weed whilst listening to this album.

Not bad, but far from the standard Sleep set with their follow-up.

Sleep's first album "Volume 1" is so different from the guys' later work that they probably should have given themselves a different name at the time. Just about the only the things "Volume 1" has in common with later Sleep work is the slow, dirge-like pace and long drawn-out guitar chords and riffs ... but bazillions of other sludgey doom metal bands have those elements in common too. The Sabbath influence would be more obvious a year later with "Volume 2" and the stoner themes would come with their "Holy Mountain" album. Still, "Volume 1" is an interesting work in that it combines a hardcore punk attitude with doom metal elements and demonstrates that the two genres go well together; along with the Melvins and Greenmachine among others, Sleep might be considered early pioneers in this fusion.

Actually there is a Sabbath influence in one early track, "The Suffering", a painfully slow song that rails against Western capitalism, the pursuit of greed and profit, and its effects on people. The vocals are usually shouty as they are on most songs here and sound as if everyone in the band sings together: the voices actually remind me of early Godflesh, who had a similar shouting approach on some of their albums. After a couple of other songs following in a similar vein, we come to "Catatonic", a bloodcurdling cry of anguish at a horrific and tragic birth. For the first time on the album, there are now passages of quiet, thoughtful and bluesy-sounding bass-dominated melody that alternate with blasts of sledgehammer guitars; there's some actual singing as well.

From here on the album becomes something of a mixed bag of anger and exasperation at humanity's stupidity and violence, and a resigned philosophical sort of outlook that looks at the fate of the planet and humans after the Mother of All Apocalypses has been and gone. "The Wall of Yawn" appears no different from the rest of the album and especially from the album's second half where you get schizophrenic songs of blast-out-loud hardcore punk and contemplative blues quietude; what makes "The Wall ..." different is its lyrics, which herald the songwriting and themes of flight and spiritual journey that would appear on later Sleep albums and then Om recordings.

"The Scourge" is as divided as the songs in its half of the album but being instrumental it highlights the contrasts much more, especially in the slow bluesy parts.

The attack is full-on, harsh and abrasive, and lacks that easy, surging, down-tuned bass-heavy power of later Sleep albums. The songs don't flow all that easily and if it weren't for the quieter sections in the later half of the recording, the album can appear one-dimensional to a lot of listeners: all toughing-out, raucous hardcore punk guitar blast. On its own, "Volume 1" is quite a good album though it's not easy to listen to, and it does show early signs that it's a unique beast, not to be replicated on a follow-up album. As part of the entire Sleep corpus, the album appears brittle compared to later work. The main value of "Volume 1" is that it provides a lyrical and thematic foundation for Sleep's later work: why do Sleep (and its successor band Om) bang on so much about astral travel, spiritual journeys leading to enlightenment and other subjects in the realm of sci-fi / fantasy? The answer is that they have looked around our world, seen its failures and realised there must be other ways for humans to find validity and peace ... and one way is to go within ourselves and undertake inner exploration.

The front cover artwork is a painting by Salvador Dali: through it, we feel something of the pain and oppression of the modern world, and the ridiculous nature of that world and what it says about humans. That Dali was a surrealist is appropriate too: just as surrealism relied on dreamworlds to open up people's minds and creativity, so "Volume 1" promises something similar, within and beyond.

Sleep's (obviously) first album is a perfect example of doom metal; I've heard a lot of complaints about it being too different from all their other work, but it's really an evolution from their beginnings as a sludgy crust punk outfit (Asbestosdeath) to a metal band. In fact three out of four of the songs that Asbestosdeath recorded are on this album. Although Sleep proved to me a great Stoner-Doom band, the stoner influence is much less seen in this album, it doesn't make it any less a great album. A crushing wall of sound, this album starts off with some sort of chant, but soon goes into the first song, a crushing, sludgy doom track. From there, it's a lot of the same stuff, the general tone is about the same, but it isn't a repetitive album by any means, every song has it's own very different riff, and each one is better than the last.

Personally, as far as the vocals go, I prefer the vocals of this album over most of the vocals on Holy Mountain, the vocals here are more like those of Dopesmoker or Jerusalem, although faster, at least as far as fast goes, they aren't fast, just not quite as slow.

As the album comes to a close, the song "Scourge" shows up, this song is different because it is strictly instrumental, straying from the crushing doom theme of the rest of the album, it's more of a show of their talent, personally one of my favorite tracks on the album, it shows how varied they can be, playing a much more melodic track, although still definitely heavy, it's a great closer to a great album.

This is album is great for any metal fan, although many would argue that Volume 1 is one of their weaker albums, not being their best album doesn't make it at all weak, this is a must have for any sleep fan, and a good listen for any metal fan, or rock fan for that matter, and a must-have for Sleep fans.

This is Sleep's debut album and while it sounds different of all their other albums, there's no denying that this is still Sleep. I'd also say that this is their weakest album and is an acquired taste, if anything. There were 4 members in the band when they recorded this and this definitely changed the chemistry of the band.


This album isn't as bluesy as Sleep's Holy Mountain" or laden with stonerisms like "Dopesmoker". In contrast, it's very dark and gloomy and the lyrics focus more on misery, negativity, and soul rot. Just take a look at the song titles and it's obvious this album is full of dirges.


"The Suffering" is a cool song. I like that riff @ 0:37, then you have the part @ 3:07 that goes: "what is a soul, a mind, constructed by social bind". That right there is the heaviest part of the entire album. The intro of "Nebuchadnezzar's dream" is also a heavy one. This album isn't as heavy as I wanted it to be and I'm a little disappointed with this release. I kind of had a feeling just by looking at the cover art. That and this was their first album.