Dead Can Dance-The Serpent´s Egg (1988)

By the time the Australian band Dead Can Dance released their fourth album, their style had radically evolved from the dark, gothic sound of their early work to a much more ambient sound with ethnic and medieval influences. Formed in Melbourne in the early 1980s, the band consisted primarily of two musicians, Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, who had already explored the sounds of dark post-punk with a gothic rock sensibility on albums such as their self-titled debut, "Spleen and Ideal" (1985), and its follow-up, "Within the Realm of a Dying Sun" (1987). With "The Serpent's Egg" (1988), the band completely abandoned classic pop and rock instrumentation in favor of elements from other musical cultures, mostly ethnic, but without abandoning synthesizers and keyboards. However, despite the disappearance of wind instruments, the band manages to achieve a colossal dimension with this work full of drama and, to some extent, bitterness with dark resonances, as reflected in tracks like the funereal "Severance", the hypnotic "Chant of the Paladin", or the complex "Ullyses".