10 Metal Songs That Are Ridiculously Long
8. Dopesmoker - Sleep
One of the often forgotten elements of the metal community is stoner rock. The commercial version of the genre may be something like Queens of the Stone Age, but even Joshua Homme was known for indulging in heavier affairs with bands like Kyuss way before his Songs for the Deaf days. There was a way to get heavier, and Sleep took the stoner element of their sound to its most extreme conclusion on their record Dopesmoker.
Being titans of the scene at this point, it’s hard even calling this a full song, being just one track that sprawls out for the entire duration of the album. So that means that it must have some crazy intricate parts, right? Wrong band to talk to for that. While there is a sense of progression throughout the tune, most of the song is different extensions on just one riff, as the band pound away on their instruments and experiment with just how heavy the album can get. If anything, the cover of the album fits pretty well, being the kind of music that you would listen to on a long trek through the desert, as you await some sort of spiritual enlightenment, certain death from dehydration, or both at the exact same time.
This isn’t the kind of music that you wait around and study every single note that’s coming out of the amplifier. This is for the times where you’re looking for music that can lull you into a trance in your headphones.