In 2009, Sleep re-formed and played a handful of shows. "
The Clarity", the band's first new studio material since 2003's
Dopesmoker, was released in 2014. In an interview with
NPR Music about the release of that single, the band wrote, "Sleep has been sporadically writing riffs for a while now [...] There is no preconceived idea of what the new material should be. It would be an amalgamated effort of decades of riff immersion." In 2017, the band released a
morse code message on their website confirming that a new album was nearing completion. During a break in a North American tour,
The Sciences was released on
April 20, 2018. Musically,
The Sciences is a
stoner metal The track "Sonic Titan" had been performed by the band in the 1990s prior to
Dopesmokers release; a live recording was included as a bonus track on
Tee Pee Records' 2003 reissue of that album. Along with the cannabis references,
The Sciences makes multiple allusions to
Birmingham heavy metal pioneers
Black Sabbath, whose sound inspired the band.
Tony Iommi is referenced frequently in the lyrics, and the song "Giza Butler" is a play on the Egyptian city of
Giza and the name of Black Sabbath's bassist,
Geezer Butler. Later in "Giza Butler", references are made to several things in
Frank Herbert's 1965 novel
Dune, including the
gom jabbar (parodied as "bong jabbar"), the
Kwisatz Haderach (parodied as "Kiefsatz
Hasherach") and the
Muad'Dib (parodied as
"Muad'Doob"). ==Release==