So it has happened again. Someone has taken on the daunting task of remastering and releasing Sleep's magnum opus Dopesmoker. This time around, the kind folks at Third Man Records took a crack at it in the form of a boxset with four LPs and a seven inch as a part of their Vault subscription series.
The last time I had put the time into listening to Dopesmoker from beginning to end was on the morning of March 5th, 2020. I was sitting in the lobby/waiting area of a funeral home while my mother was being cremated in the room next door. So, needless to say, the album will always carry a certain amount of weight in my mind and it takes a lot out of me to listen to it because of all of the awfulness that I've attached to it. Trying to take an academic approach to listening to four different versions of the album was a difficult task. Every time it kicked in, I was sent back to the wood paneled room and uncomfortable chair that I sat in for two hours while the oven roared. Dopesmoker certainly has the power to send the mind through time and space. Or it could be my unaddressed trauma from that time in my life.
For those that may be unfamiliar, Dopesmoker is a single track that comes in over an hour long and it took Sleep several years to compose and record the album. In my opinion, as far as Stoner Metal goes, Dopesmoker is right next to the first four Black Sabbath records when it comes to a band mastering their craft and capturing the proverbial lighting in a bottle. It covers three sides of vinyl and is not for the impatient or those who lack an attention span. Over the years, there have been two official releases of Dopesmoker and one bootlegged version. This new mastering on Third Man is now the fourth version that I've bought and the fifth version of Dopesmoker that I've heard.
Dopesmoker was initially rejected by London Records when Sleep turned it in for release back in the late nineties. From the looks of Discogs, London Records put out some promo CDs and cassettes before pulling the plug on an actual release. This rejection is what probably led to the not so official 1998 release of the album under the name Jerusalem by Music Cartel Records. Somebody, somewhere along the line, decided to cut about ten minutes off of the song and then break it into six individual tracks. The ten minute edit always seemed odd to me. If I'm going to take the time to listen to this monster, don't be such a coward and give me all sixty-three minutes of it. On top of the weird edits, the guitar tones sounded very tame and the mastering itself sounded like it was missing something.
In 2003, Tee Pee Records gave the song a proper release. They returned the missing ten minutes and the title of Dopesmoker. Up until this release by Third Man, this was the version of Dopesmoker that I preferred. The guitar tones had more crunch to them and I could feel the bass line driving the progression and movement of the song more so than other versions that I've heard. This was also the first time that the track “Sonic Titan” was included on side D.
In 2012, Southern Lord was able to license the album and worked with Sleep to remaster and repackage Dopesmoker with new artwork. Vinyl was pressed in every color of the rainbow along with picture discs and shiny holographic covers. The mastering was handled by Brad Boatright and it sounded like he cleaned it up a little too much. There were improvements to the overall sound of the album but it felt candy coated when it came to the guitar tones. As much as Dopesmoker could be considered to be candy coated. It reminded me of how the early mixes of Nirvana's Nevermind had a little dirt on them until the label brought Andy Wallace in to make the record more palatable. This time around, a live version of “Holy Mountain” was included on side D to go along with “Sonic Titan.”
The fifth version of Dopesmoker that I've heard was played on Henry Rollins' radio show on KCRW around the time of the 2012 reissue. Years ago, he had been given a cassette with an early mix of Dopesmoker from a manager or lawyer around the time Sleep was trying to find a label brave and/or stupid enough to take a chance on it. According to Rollins, the bare bones mix on this cassette was far superior than any of the released versions because no one labored over it to the point of overthinking the task at hand. Since I heard it streamed over the internet with the compression of radio and a few ad breaks inserted instead of a physical piece of media or high res download I won't purposely get lost in the weeds trying to dig into it.
This new behemoth that Third Man has unleashed upon the world was worth every penny. It sounds like it was mastered with a lower output volume. This allows all of the frequencies to fall into a more dynamic range without one frequency peaking over another. Some may see the lower volume as a negative but that's why Satan made volume dials. Matt Pike's guitar tone has gotten its teeth back from the 2012 pressing and Al Cisneros' bass has enough rumble in it to create a sinkhole.
“Sonic Titan” and “Holy Mountain” have been replaced by a recently unearthed studio version of the song “Hot Lava Man.” Over the years, “Hot Lava Man” has shown up on live bootlegs of varying quality so having this song take over side D is a welcomed addition.
On LP 3, side E has two alternate takes of Dopesmoker so the listener can gain a sense of how Sleep got to where they were trying to go. Side F is an etching of the stillsuit wearing Weedian that was designed by Arik Roper and has been used as the cover art for Dopesmoker since 2012.
LP 4 has a live version of Dopesmoker that was recorded, in San Francisco, at a club called the I-Beam on May 28th, 1994. This live version does sound leaps and bounds better than all of the bootlegs that I've come in contact with.
The seven inch that closes out the boxset stretches the 45rpm format to the limit. Side A is a radio edit of Dopesmoker that clocks in at four minutes and forty-four seconds. Side B is another truncated version titled “Proceeds The Weedian” that was found among the tapes.
The new packaging includes photos of the band, on the inner sleeves, that were taken around the time that Dopesmoker was recorded. All of the records were pressed on 180-gram vinyl and in a color that Third Man is calling “Green Kush.” There were two posters included, as well. One of which is the riff chart that was used to map out the recording sessions. And for good measure, they threw in a patch to coincide with the patch that came with the Live At Third Man boxset that came out a few years ago.
As much as I would have wanted to hear the song cut at 45rpm, doing so would have presented a logistical and editing nightmare. The tape that was used to record Dopesmoker only held twenty-two minutes so they had to stop and change reels twice during recording. This makes things more compatible with the 33rpm format since a side of vinyl can barely hold twenty-two minutes. Cutting the vinyl at 45rpm would have created the need to add new edits to go from side to side. And because of the scrutiny reissues of seminal albums are put under, I would not want to be the person that had to decide where to fade in and out.
I do wish that Third Man would have included a download card with the whole thing in .WAV files. I know why they don't provide downloads for their Vault releases but there were a few pops and skips on the vinyl that I couldn't clean up when I played it into my computer. And it would have been nice to not have to do several hours of work so I could jam this thing onto my iPod. At least there were no locked grooves on Dopesmoker like there were on the Live At Third Man release.
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