First Listen: Agalloch, 'The Serpent & The Sphere' — npr.org

hide captionAgalloch's new album, The Serpent & The Sphere, comes out May 13. Agalloch's new album, The Serpent & The Sphere, comes out May 13. It's been four years since Agalloch released Marrow of the Spirit, a spectacular record that exposed the cultish metal band to a wider audience seeking something ritualistic and caustic in heavy music. For all of its lengthy and textured songs, Marrow kept things fairly linear — thrilling in its momentum, for sure, but onward and forward. Maybe that's why Agalloch's fifth album, The Serpent & The Sphere, feels like a film shot out of sequence, with "Eureka!" moments hidden throughout and, more often, much after the fact.

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