One of the most ambitious pieces of metal music — and music in general — almost never saw the light of day as an official release, but the artist behind the song, the doom metal band Sleep, made it happen. The song “Dopesmoker,” which is over one hour long and makes up an entire album of the same name, was only released in the way Sleep envisioned thanks to the band’s dedication and tenacity.
When the band originally started working on their third studio album, which would go on to become Dopesmoker, their label, London Records, wasn’t a fan of the idea of one long song. They attempted to make an album out of it by breaking it into several different tracks, which is what would end up being released as Jerusalem in 1999.
The disagreements over the music piece contributed to Sleep’s disbandment in 1998, as well as a long legal battle that followed. Four different versions of their third album came out in the years after. The one that is closest to Sleep’s initial vision is Dopesmoker, which was released in 2003 by Tee Pee Records.
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While the first version got great reviews, Dopesmoker received rave feedback from critics and fans alike. In AllMusic‘s review of the record, Eduardo Rivadavia wrote, “Revealed here at last, in all of its colossal glory, Dopesmoker is at once an instant doom metal classic — some might even say a masterpiece.”
In 2012, Southern Lord Records came out with a deluxe rerelease of Dopesmoker, which peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart. A decade later, Third Man Records released a remastered version of the record that included a Sleep song that hadn’t been released on digital before called “Hot Lava Man.” A few months after its streaming release, a vinyl reissue also came out.
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