Sleep Setlist

Holy Mountain
The Morrisist
Have Spacesuit Will Travel
Arrival of the Industry Ships
Hempispheres
From Beyond
Whole Wheat Mountain / Well Baked
Dragonaut

Tour Dates

11/7 – Detroit, MI @ St. Andrews Hall
11/9 – Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Hall
11/10 – Montreal, QC @ Club Soda
11/11 – Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Ballroom
11/12 – Boston, MA @ Roadrunner
11/13 – Hudson, NY @ Basilica Hudson
11/15 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of Living Arts
11/16 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount
11/17 – Washington, DC @ Lincoln Theatre

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■ Sleep
Formed in San Jose in 1990, Sleep became doom-metal legends with Sleep’s Holy Mountain (1992) and the hour-long Dopesmoker (2003), then returned with The Sciences in 2018. Founder Al Cisneros now leads a new lineup with Melvins drummer Dale Crover and Void guitarist Bubba Dupree on Hempispheres (Third Man, 2026), the band’s first album in eight years

“First three songs from the pit, no flash.” It’s the standard rule for concert photographers, with only very rare exceptions. So when we got the direction for Wednesday night at First Avenue – “first ten minutes from the pit, no flash” – it got my attention.

But then I remembered: this is Sleep, most famous for Dopesmoker, a 63-minute album containing one 63-minute song. Sleep is touring behind the new Hempispheres (2026, Third Man), and on this tour they’ve been opening with “Holy Mountain” (8:44 on the record Sleep’s Holy Mountain), and then “The Morrisist” (4:43), and “Have Spacesuit Will Travel” (7:22) from the latest record. Three of that kind of song – twenty minutes’ worth? – is way more time than I’ve ever needed to shoot a band.

As a music fan and concert-goer who sometimes wants a band to “get to the point”, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But for Sleep, the sludgy assault that places volume and groove over dynamism is the point. After a 15 minute introduction of disembodied space-command radio transmissions, the band hit the stage right on time at 10:00pm, and at 110db. I couldn’t help being moved by the spare arrangements (only guitar, bass, and drums, amplified to an unholy extreme), chant-like vocals, and precise bluesy runs. After what felt like no time at all, I checked my watch: 10:09. I moved around the rest of the room, and realized I’d been listening to Sleep all day, and missing their secret charm: I just wasn’t playing them loud enough.

And if the grinding punishment of dangerous volume, glacial tempos, and infrequent harmonic change didn’t move everyone in the photo pit, I found the floor full of Sleep fans entranced in a near-religious experience. I felt like I must be seeing clouds of smoke coming up from the back, but that’s not allowed at First Avenue, so I’m sure I was mistaken. Sleep’s new drummer, Dale Crover, visited First Avenue in August as part of the Melvins, and his style fits the role amazingly well. I’m less familiar with Bubba Dupree (ex-Void, replacing founding guitarist Matt Pike), but his filthy, oozing blues riffs in the middle of that rhythmic chaos were perfect.

I counted (about) eight songs over (about) 80 minutes (with the band on stage well past 11pm). Closer “Dragonaut” was a stomping, swampy triumph.

San Diego’s Schizophonics opened the night with garage-surf rock antics. Frontman Pat Beers was a whirlwind, climbing over the pit into the crowd, guitar and microphone stand in hand, not once but twice. They have a distorted low-end sound in common with Sleep, but not much else. Pittsburgh’s Zombi cooled things down quite a bit with their spacey, John-Carpenter-esque electronica. Their grooves and space-suit-ready atmospherics certainly set a mood.

Minneapolis was the first night of the second leg of the U.S. tour, which goes through mid-November.