Released 24 October 1988 The Serpent's Egg
(1988) Aion
(1990) Release date 24 October 1988 | Length 36:15 Artist Dead Can Dance Label 4AD | |
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Genres World music, Neoclassical dark wave Producers Brendan Perry, Lisa Gerrard Similar Dead Can Dance albums, World music albums | ||
The Serpent's Egg is the fourth studio album by Australian musical act Dead Can Dance. It was released on 24 October 1988 by record label 4AD.
Contents
Background
The album was the last produced while Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard were a romantic couple. A majority of the album was recorded in a multi-storey apartment block in the Isle of Dogs, London.
Perry discussed the album's title: "In a lot of aerial photographs of the Earth, if you look upon it as a giant organism—a macrocosmos—you can see that the nature of the life force, water, travels in a serpentine way".
Track listing
All tracks written by Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry.
Critical reception
In a retrospective review, AllMusic said, "Perry and Gerrard continued to experiment and improve with The Serpent's Egg, as much a leap forward as Spleen and Ideal was some years previously", heaping particular praise on the album opener "The Host of Seraphim", which it called "so jaw-droppingly good that almost the only reaction is sheer awe".
In other media
"The Host of Seraphim" was used in the end credits of the 2007 film The Mist. It was also used in the theatrical trailer for Home of the Brave, and in the non-narrative documentary film Baraka.
Personnel
Songs
1The Host of Seraphim6:19
2Orbis de Ignis1:36
3Severance3:23