Southern Lord are set to re-release Dopesmoker, the fabled lost LP from stoner-rock titans Sleep.

Dopesmoker‘s genesis has become something of a doom metal legend. After the success of 1993’s Sleep’s Holy Mountain, the band spent years working up a single hour-long track. Having laid the record down in 1996, label politics scuppered its release: the band were shunted from Earache Records to London Records, who then refused to sanction the record in its complete form. An edited version of the album originally saw the light of day as Jerusalem in 1999, and subsequently saw full release through Tee Pee Records in 2003. Southern Lord claim that their upcoming edit is the first to present the recording as the band originally intended it.

Dopesmoker circa 2012 differs in a number of substantial ways from the original. The original studio tapes have been given the remastering treatment, with the new recording promising to be “clearer, louder and…at last a true representation of the band’s hour-plus Weedian chronicle”. The reissue will also come bundled with a previously unavailable live recording of the band playing at the I-Beam in San Francisco in 1994, plus new cover art from band associate Arik Roper. A release date has yet to be confirmed.

Sleep are also set to tour Europe. Their UK and Ireland dates are as follows:

May 22 – The Arches, Glasgow
May 23 – Button Factory, Dublin
May 24 – Stylus, Leeds
May 25 – I’ll Be Your Mirror, London