The stoner-doom institution returns, minus founding guitarist Matt Pike, for a monotonous album of timid riffs and bad weed puns

The departure of guitarist Matt Pike doesn’t leave the stoner metal band marooned

The quality of Hempispheres stands well enough to rate as a solid crossover work, leaving the depth-charged ruins of Dopesmoker and the following orbit of The Sciences behind, finding new planetary matter to dig into

It’s unlikely I’ll pick Hempispheres over their classics, as it’s the least overwhelming and that’s mainly what I want to experience when I listen to Sleep. However, that doesn’t mean it is not a legitimate, well-thought work by committed musicians who evidently navigate a new era

The firepower Matt Pike brought to Sleep's seminal recordings is noticeably absent, but rather than replace it, Cisneros and company chose to embrace a more celestial, perhaps age-appropriate approach to getting ripped