But whereas their last album, 2012’s Anastasis, was at least tethered by Perry’s cavernous rock vocal to some sense of pop, Dionysus has no such space. Perry and singer Lisa Gerrard have long been uninhibited in the search for musical inspiration, borrowing everything from Gregorian chant to Middle Eastern progressions. During the first piece alone, “Sea Borne,” Brendan Perry turns his hand to instruments including the shrill zourna, the haunting gadulka, and the creeping sustain of the bowed psaltery he eventually employs everything from the gong to the gaida (a bagpipe from Southeastern Europe) to weave together this rich sound. A two-act record representing “different facets of the Dionysus myth and his cult,” it is divided across seven tracks, each meant to share a new phase of the god’s saga.

Even by Dead Can Dance’s own outsized standards, though, Dionysus is an album of radical ambition, a work of scholarly pursuit and musical depth that explores European folk traditions, the boundaries of language, and Latin American bird calls.

By 1993, their reputation was so strong they could put out Into the Labyrinth, an album of classical legend and global folk, and sell half-a-million copies.

Since forming in Melbourne, Australia, in 1981, Dead Can Dance have shown the kind of towering ambition that has given them purchase in goth-rock circles and among filmmakers looking for windswept gravitas.

Dead can dance dionysus mega