Largely recorded inside the 13th-floor flat that Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry shared in the bleak London neighborhood called Isle of Dogs, The Serpent’s Egg feels at once like an affirmation of the eternal life cycle of Earth, and also a omen of its destruction. The leadoff song, “The Host of Seraphim,” became one of Dead Can Dance’s signature works, and it's been used in dozens of movies—usually in tales of apocalyptic horror. Gerrard later recalled that their apartment overlooked the wasteland of East London and its polluted Thames. While the duo denied that the music was a conscious interpretation of that landscape, the music deals with the psychology of being lost in a decaying world. On the poignant “Severance,” Perry chants these words: “When all the leaves have fallen and turned to dust/Will we remain entrenched within our ways/Indifference, the plague that moves throughout this land…” The rest of the album charts the tension between the internal and external. It's the comfort and solace of being inside—whether in a church, an apartment, or simply inside one's own head—versus the impending storms that push against the door.