The time has come for me to add The World Under Unsun to my evaluations of the Lunatic Soul albums; many months have passed since I first started listening, and I think I can now put it into context. The Circle of Life and Death is closed; if there are any new LS albums (and I think there will be) they will be the start of something different (dare I say…beautiful??).
The introduction to this series of posts is here; you can follow the arrows at the bottom of each post to find the rest (or just use the search function).
The World Under Unsun
- Released: October 31, 2025
- Colour: Gold
- Ranking: 4
I’ve written a long and detailed review of TWUU which you can find here. It’s been a few months since I wrote it, but what I said then still stands.
The World Under Unsun is a monumental album in more than just length: it showcases Mariusz Duda’s conceptual skills in a way found in none of the rest of his discography. He didn’t just write songs, he gathered and curated ideas that span the entire Lunatic Soul project, incorporating familiar themes, repeated tropes, references to and glimpses of past albums, creating a masterful summary of the entire 8-album cycle in 14 remarkable tracks.
It was a difficult album for him to make, for a variety of reasons. Riverside seemed to be eternally on tour: their 20th Anniversary trek around the world followed by the writing and recording of the band’s eighth album followed by that tour…it was hard for him to find time to work on the new album. There were other issues as well, but the result was a five-year gap between TWUU and the album before, the longest in LS release history.
Musically, the album is spectacular: dense, dark and richly textural, sweepingly atmospheric but with plenty of Mariusz’s signature heavy bass riffs. There is no lack of melody nor beautiful ballads; and familiar trance and oriental themes trace their way throughout the album. It is Lunatic Soul writ large.
For me though, the lyrics carry special weight. In terms of the story arc, the protagonist has “crossed this bridge” (see “The Fountain” in Through Shaded Woods) for the final time, to wind up the remarkable narrative cycle of the whole project, and we see direct links to earlier albums in the lyrics of several tracks (“The Prophecy”, “Loop of Fate”, “Confession” for example). However, there are layers of meaning here (as there often are with Mariusz’s lyrics), words that delve into deep, dark places of the soul, some very powerful and painful to read. He has stated before that lyric-writing is a form of therapy for him, and these words are as profoundly therapeutic as anything he’s ever penned.
Upside: An imposing album and a grand summation of the whole project. There are songs of immense power, of delicate beauty, of deep reflection; and every one moving the album forward. It feels much shorter than its 90-minute length.
Downside: There is an unrelieved darkness about TWUU, overall a dearth of emotional variety compared to other albums in the project; this is the only aspect where its length may tell against it. And speaking personally: I find that Mariusz’s vocals are too deep in the mix. This is unfortunate because he’s done some spectacular singing and it would have been nice to fully hear him.
Addendum
The addition of TWUU means that all the albums below shift down by one from their original positions. That is:
Album Original Rank Revised Rank
- Impressions 1 1
- Walking on a Flashlight Beam 2 2
- Lunatic Soul I 3 3
- The World Under Unsun — 4
- Through Shaded Woods 4 5
- Under the Fragmented Sky 5 6
- Lunatic Soul II 6 7
- Fractured 7 8
I also need to clarify something: In my post on Walking on a Flashlight Beam I called the album the best Lunatic Soul of all, and yet my rank is #2. Why not #1? Because Impressions is my sentimental favourite, the LS album that dug in most deeply during those early days of discovery. I love it but It is not the best LS, not the masterpiece. That is indeed Walking on a Flashlight Beam.
