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Dopesmoker
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Price: $11.49
Price subject to change!
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 7072390049214
Format: Original recording remastered
Label: Tee Pee Records
Manufacturer: Tee Pee Records
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Tee Pee Records
Release Date: 2003-06-10
Studio: Tee Pee Records
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Customer reviews of Dopesmoker
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: music for sannyasins of the modern era
Comment: ... Dopesmoker is a challenging album for many reasons ...
... It's not just something you put on to kill time for a few minutes ...
... It's something you have to be immersed in and surrendered to ...
... In the right setting, it's nothing short of a "religious" experience ...
... You don't have to be high to enjoy it, but it makes all the difference if you are ...
... The lyrics, which some people feel are "silly", paint a vivid scene, and are chanted with such force that you cannot help but become a believer ...
... It's like hearing Muhammad chant the Qur'an for the first time, or hearing a monastery full of monks gravely reciting Buddhist sutras ...
... For me, this is the highest peak that "rock", "metal", "stoner-rock", whatever, - can reach ...
... It's meditative, trance-inducing, mystical ... goes beyond conventional limitations that idiots mindlessly follow regarding what music should be ...
... A certain type of mind is required for this. Lots of people will not "get it" ...
... Those that do "get it", know it to be one of the most refreshing, cleansing, engrossing, inspiring, deep listening experiences available ...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Epic, god-like heaviness
Comment: Quite simply, this album is for me the definitive example of stoner rock. Sleep really managed to transcend all the limitations of the genre with this album by magnifying and stretching stoner rock/metal's elements to an extreme rarely ever attempted, let alone achieved with this much success.
Be warned: this album is not for the casual metal fan. It is repetitive, droning and it unfolds at a glacial pace. The vocals are sung in a hoarse monotone and the lyrics can be ridiculously over the top: "Drop out of life with bong in hand / follow pot smoke toward the riff filled land".
But somehow, Sleep managed to take these elements and turn them into a bona fide masterpiece. The length of the song actually works in its favor -- there is simply no other way that these fuzzed out, C-tuned riffs, played at unbelievably slow, heavy tempos, could otherwise be developed the way they deserve to be. The band plays together with supernatural chemistry, grasping the sprawling changes with precision. There are also excellent uses of dynamics utilizing stops and starts and changes in volume, and a few cosmic solos from Matt Pike, too.
And about those silly lyrics: I suppose there is an element of humor to them, but the way they are delivered by Cisneros and the roiling power of the band backing him up manages to transcend any campiness. By the end of the record you aren't laughing at the words and the story they tell, but getting ready to rid yourself of all worldly posessions to join the procession of "weedians" on their long journey to Nazareth. It's a neat trick, to be able to use that sort of comic-book imagery to preach a quite sincere religion of marijuana use. Only Sleep has really been able to pull it off this well in the metal world.
Yes, like the title of the record and the lyrics certainly imply, this is a great album for doing a few bong hits and zoning out on the deep spaces and mountanous riffs. Sleep weren't just unshy about promoting pot smoking, cannabis worship was very nearly the band's entire reason for existing in the first place. It's a record by and for pot heads, obviously.
But you don't need to be high to enjoy this. The musicianship alone makes it worth hearing, and the gloriously fuzzed-out, detuned guitars are every metalhead's wet dream. I have listened dozens times to this record. While it's too demanding a listen to be the sort of CD you would would want on heavy rotation, I find myself pulling it out every few months and giving it another spin when I want to truly get lost in titanic riffs for an hour or so.
An essential album for any fan of heavy music, and one of the best metal albums ever. Hard to beat.
Customer Rating:
Summary: even Deeper into Sleep
Comment: After Sleeps Holy Mountain has infected your brain with it's purity and perfect metal essense you will want to go deeper into the music.. this album delivers on that in a big way, a single 60 minute track of the best heavy metal ever created.. broken into several movements it's a deeper release than "Holy Mountain" and delves further into less constructed elements and more structureless forms.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Monumental doom drone...!!
Comment: If your looking at this, and know what it is... Then buy it!!! You know you want it, a monumental metal 63 minute song!! It`s brilliant!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Matt Pike Should Have Done The Vocals On This.
Comment: My only complaint and I still give it five stars. It's not about playing fast, or even the fact that this is heavier than hell. It's the way Sleep strung the whole song together. By the end of the song, like 64 minutes, if you haven't been smoking, you'll sure as hell feel like you have. Not many bands can pull that off. Matt Pike's future, High On Fire, can certainly do it, old Sabbath without a doubt, Electric Wizard's Dopethrone. Matt Pike's vocals would have made it that much heavier, in my opinion. Still, one of the heaviest metal releases, ever. Worth the price to be in your collection of CD's heavy enough to level the earth.
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Editorial Reviews:
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While pundits often seem eager to throw the adjective "uncompromising" at any rock musician with more than three nipple-rings, what we have here is the real deal. After haphazardly embarking on their intensely single-minded career in the late-'80s, Northern California's pioneering prophets of doom-metal took the opportunity of a '90s major-label advance to record a 63-plus-minute magnum opus to ganja and other Valhalla-friendly political conceits that effectively cost them same promising record deal and embroiled them in enough turmoil to permanently splinter the band. Cut by nearly a dozen minutes, the track eventually surfaced in ‘99 to some critical acclaim as "Jerusalem." But now, sounding like a hung-over Thor awakening from a three-century bender, the original hour-plus "Dopesmoker" returns to stake its claim as the heaviest, if minimally expansive metal dirge of them all, with founder/vocalist Al Cisneros's massive bass drone and tortured growl making for a hypnotic, if harrowing, listening experience. This new edition also includes the previously unreleased, live-in-the-studio "Sonic Titan," a comparatively upbeat drone that breezes in at just under 10 minutes. --Jerry McCulley
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