Not our usual department, but it’s time to go to SLEEP

Sleep are a stoner/doom metal band. Not our usual department, we know, but last weekend Junior PR Rosie went to see the almighty band at the o2 Forum in Kentish Town.

The gig was a loud one, to say the least. Sleep usually play their landmark brand of stoner metal using custom made amplifiers to create multiple tone layers to the music and they turn them up LOUD. Nevertheless, the gig was like a long, rather noisy meditation.

Sleep’s brand of metal relies on hypnotic and repetitive riffs and basslines, with heavy yet tasteful drum grooves to accompany them, leaving no space for the usual mosh pits which usually happen at metal gigs. Instead, the whole crowd was entranced by the slow and rhythmic tones of their latest album, The Sciences. Headbanging is on the agenda for this evening, it seems, with the crowd as a sea of heads moving up and down in time to each prolonged beat of the music.

A cloud of smoke hovers over the audience, stopped not at all by the security guards just trying to do their incredibly futile job. Prior to the band walking out, we are treated to about twenty minutes of Moon landing transmissions, something of a trademark for this band’s live performances. The set list comprises of the songs you’d expect, with a noticeable absence of ‘Antarcticans Thawed’ and the legendary ‘Dopesmoker’, which is screamed out by various audience members in vain throughout the performance. Marijuanaut’s Theme opens the set, followed by Holy Mountain which is a highlight. 

I leave the venue with my head feeling clearer than it has all day. Getting lost in the music is just part of the service which a Sleep gig provides.