| The Serpent & the Sphere | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | May 13, 2014 | |||
| Studio | Cloud City Sound, Portland, Oregon Everything Hz, Portland, Oregon | |||
| Genre | Black metal, doom metal, folk metal | |||
| Length | 59:44 | |||
| Label | Profound Lore | |||
| Producer | Agalloch, Billy Anderson | |||
| Agalloch chronology | ||||
| ||||
The Serpent & the Sphere is the fifth and final studio album by American heavy metal band Agalloch. It was released on May 13, 2014 in the U.S., followed by releases on May 16 in Germany and May 19 in Europe. [1] [2]
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 84/100 [3] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AbsolutePunk | 8/10 [4] |
| AllMusic |    [5] |
| The Austin Chronicle | [6] |
| Exclaim! | 10/10 [7] |
| Metal Hammer | 6/7 [8] |
| Metal Storm | 8,3/10 [9] |
| Pitchfork | 8.3/10 [10] |
| Slant Magazine | [11] |
| Spin | 8/10 [12] |
| Sputnikmusic | 2/5 [13] |
The album received mostly positive reviews. Michael Toland of The Austin Chronicle described the album as "one boot in balmy progressive folk and the other in frigid black metal" with "some of its prettiest, most haunted acoustic textures and heaviest, raspiest roars". Kim Kelly of Spin stated that the band's "blackened sound" is "more pronounced than ever" while describing the production as "impeccable: Agalloch have never sounded so rich, so full".
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation" | 10:28 |
| 2. | "(serpens caput)" | 3:06 |
| 3. | "The Astral Dialogue" | 5:11 |
| 4. | "Dark Matter Gods" | 8:36 |
| 5. | "Celestial Effigy" | 6:59 |
| 6. | "Cor Serpentis (the sphere)" | 2:58 |
| 7. | "Vales Beyond Dimension" | 6:48 |
| 8. | "Plateau of the Ages" | 12:26 |
| 9. | "(serpens cauda)" | 3:12 |
| Total length: | 59:44 | |
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, a shrieking vocal style, heavily distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, raw (lo-fi) recording, unconventional song structures, and an emphasis on atmosphere. Artists often appear in corpse paint and adopt pseudonyms.
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking; deep growling vocals; aggressive, powerful drumming, featuring double kick and blast beat techniques; minor keys or atonality; abrupt tempo, key, and time signature changes; and chromatic chord progressions. The lyrical themes of death metal may include slasher film-style violence, political conflict, religion, nature, philosophy, true crime and science fiction.
Doom metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music that typically uses slower tempos, low-tuned guitars and a much "thicker" or "heavier" sound than other heavy metal genres. Both the music and the lyrics are intended to evoke a sense of despair, dread, and impending doom. The genre is strongly influenced by the early work of Black Sabbath, who formed a prototype for doom metal. During the first half of the 1980s, a number of bands such as Witchfinder General and Pagan Altar from England, American bands Pentagram, Saint Vitus, the Obsessed, Trouble, and Cirith Ungol, and Swedish band Candlemass defined doom metal as a distinct genre.
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