SLEEP's AL CISNEROS Discusses Upcoming Reunion Shows

Acclaimed San Jose, California stoner doom metal band SLEEP will reunite for two U.K. shows in May 2009 as part of All Tomorrow's Parties' (ATP) The Fans Strike Back festival. The band will perform the album "Holy Mountain" in its entirety as well as selections from "Dopesmoker" and more.

BrooklynVegan recently conducted an interview with SLEEP bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros about the group's decision to reunite and future plans. An excerpt from the chat follows below.

BrooklynVegan: When I interviewed you in September, were the plans already in the works, or did the ATP folks corner you at the festival and start to nail it down then?

Al Cisneros: These plans have always been kind of tentative when the right time arose... We've always been in contact. We've never been estranged for a long period of time since the band broke up in '96. It's really difficult to have all three of us in the same room at the same time... touring schedules, recording schedules, all sorts of different factors. The first time we were all together after the dissolution of SLEEP was at a party at my house in San Francisco about six years ago, and we talked then and it was more of a "someday-get-around-to-it"-type thing. At my wedding last August, both Matt [Pike of HIGH ON FIRE, KALAS] and Chris [HAKIUS, ex-OM] were there and it was another rare opportunity to discuss it in person, rather than convey phone messages through third parties. It was then that we were like, "Let's do this now."

BrooklynVegan: When you decided to reunite, was it because of the fans or more because of the way SLEEP ended?

Al Cisneros: Promoters have constantly tried to get that band back together, so that was never an impetus. It was really more about when we were ready as people. The main reason, the only reason really... The three of us as friends had gone through an indescribable disappointment with SLEEP... it never blossomed in the way that we focused our youthful energies, and then it broke... When it ended at the last practice, we were all devastated... heartbroken and really just shattered. It was debilitating, in this catatonic state for all of us. Anyway, we've always reserved an option as to how it would be really healing to play those songs again on our terms, and not Earache's or London's or certain I-don't-even-want-to-mention terms... but for us, the friends that met in school. Since SLEEP ended, those songs have remained as trapped energy in all of us for essentially 12 years. These shows offer a way to heal, and to close it with peace and a smile inside. It's an opportunity to have catharsis and put those songs in the sky where they belong... to move forward and let it purge.

Read the entire interview from BrooklynVegan.

Watch footage of SLEEP performing live in 1994: