Evolving out of sludge doom metal band Abestosdeath, Sleep released its first album Volume One in 1991. This release has evolved over the years into an underground phenomenon with bands from all genres crediting it as an inspiration. With this in mind it should come as no surprise that rock’n’roll wunderkind The Breeders have hand-picked Sleep to perform at All Tomorrow’s Parties happening this coming October 31.
The band’s guitarist Matt Pike took time out from rehab (but not the rehab you’re thinking), jamming for a new album for Sleep and his work as frontman for stoner rock band High On Fire to chat to Beat about everything Sleep.
“I just had knee surgery, so I’m chilling out at home at the moment. So I’ve been sitting on my arse for the last week,” states a predictably laconic Pike.
“We did our last Sleep show in France (Hellfest), and then did a couple of High of Fire shows – just to make a little bit of money for me to sit around on my butt,” he laughs warmly.
He now explains that the extra money from the extra shows resulted in some well needed medical attention, “I’ve had a bad knee for a really long time and it’s just been getting progressively worse. I finally got some medical insurance to do it. I had the whole rehab thing happen and I had to use insurance for that too. So I’m slowly working through all my health issues.”
It would be fair to infer that after thirty plus years on the road plus his current knee recovery that Pike may have had second thoughts about committing to the Australian tour for ATP but this was not the case as even the crustiest of rock’n’rollers get a bit sentimental now and again.
“Our fans in Australia kind of deserve to see Sleep, finally. Obviously I’ve been over in Australia with High of Fire quite a bit and Al [Cisneros – singer and bassist] came with OM recently, but it is really important to us that Sleep plays in Aus!” enthuses Pike.
Pike now, very honestly, grapples with the reality of a band’s music being incredibly influential with the cool kids and making an impact 5-10 years after its release, but what’s it like living with an album that you are so desperately proud of and which you know is special, but no one notices it… yet?
“We’ve had some hard times in the past, you know. We made some really youthful albums, with probably the most well-known being Holy Mountain – It was really full of piss and vinegar. We really became good at playing right around Holy Mountain. It had a big impact, but not until a little later.”
Now, with a voice tinged in Macbethean like irony Pike explains the anatomy of Holy Fire, “What we were doing at the time, which was in the early ‘90s, was really not that popular. We were doing Sabbath-y, doom sounds, a few people kind of got it, but it wasn’t popular. Not like the death metal thing at the time. Like Napalm Death and Carcass; they were doing the popular thing. We were this weird Sabbath band out of the punk scene. We went from Asbestosdeath to Sleep and transitioned musically. It made an impact on people but it seemed like it took a long time to sink in. Almost to the point where at the end, just before we first broke-up (1998), people started catching on to it, we only just started getting some fans then.”
It is refreshing now that Pike is willing to grapple with why Sleep’s music is so cool nowadays but struggled to make a commercial impact when it was released (Having been a music journalist for just under a decade I know that getting an older act to be so candid is rare).
“I think nowadays Sleep’s music is kind of something different (to what’s on offer). A lot of kids these days are smarter thinkers. If something is really underground, outspoken or different – they all want to have an identity that’s not so MTV. I know what used to be underground hip hop in my day, has now turned into a big corporate smear. I’m happy there’s kids out there that aren’t so attached to this corporate spew and know about something that’s a bit better, in the musical context,” intellectualises Pike.
Well we better let Pike get back to rehabilitating his knee so he is in stellar form when Sleep perform in Australia for the first time this October!
BY DENVER MAXX AND JESSICA WILLOUGHBY
