Asbestosdeath "Dejection, Unclean" (Southern Lord)
By Ari Joffe
Friday. Jun 08, 1:31 PM
Pre-Sleep outfit rarities unearthed.

I feel like a total music geek for now owning this. But fuck it, I know quite a few hairy-faced dudes who’d be way jealous I have this. If I only had it on vinyl, I could command them all to do my bidding. Sort of like Dan Halen on that cartoon Squidbilles. Ever seen that? Oh man is it funny.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Asbestosdeath are Sleep before they changed their name. It’s the earliest incarnation of that band, with Thomas Choi on second guitar and vocals. I’m fairly sure this is the same line-up that recorded the first Sleep record, Volume One, but I’d have to call my buddy Ron to ask, and that dude’s lady just had another kid, so he’s like AWOL at the moment.

It sort of sounds like Volume One: real sludgy and slow, nowhere near as Sabbath-influenced as Holy Mountain or as massively trippy as Jerusalem / Dopesmoker. They sound young, angry, and loaded. If you were one of their buds back in the late ‘80s (when this material was recorded), watching them thrash away in some garage somewhere in bumblefuck California while you got plastered, I’m sure you’d think they were the greatest band ever.

In this day and age, they still sound pretty cool. You can hear slight stirrings of the epic sounds they’d forge later, but mostly it’s just primal sludge rock, raw as can be.
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Ari Joffe

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