Patience pays off on 'Angels II'

Earth’s follow-up to last year’s masterpiece “Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I” explores the same doomed country as its predecessor, and just as triumphantly. It sounds like the soundtrack for a Spaghetti Western starring Clint Eastwood as a ghost. You can imagine the band playing raggedly in the corner of some haunted saloon.

Since Earth’s switch from a more traditional doom drone to its current country-and-jazz-tinged sound, the band’s recordings have become leaner and crisper. The four-piece band’s two guitars, drum kit and cello make the most of their minimal arrangement.

“Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II” is as heavy as Earth gets, not because of its devastating noise, but rather the emotional weight of its songwriting.

The album is full of shifty, deliberate music, rattling the bones and lumbering along at a glacial pace. Its five songs are spread throughout 45 minutes and demand the listener’s patience, which is rewarded many times over. Opener “Sigil of Bass” is perhaps the band’s most spare and prettiest song, with a touching cello and guitar duet played out over the occasional rattle of cymbals.

Standout “A Multiplicity of Doors,” the longest track at 13 minutes, could drive you stir-crazy in the right heat. Drums and bass march across screeching cello before the guitar plucks out a mirage-like riff that sends the song into the sunset.

Earth has fashioned a widescreen desert landscape for getting lost in all day long.

Becoming sunburned has never sounded so good.