Lunatic Soul stream brand new single The Passage

Lunatic Soul, the darker, electronic prog side-project from Riverside's Mariusz Duda, have streamed their brand new single Passages. The sing is the first music released from their upcoming album, Through Shaded Woods, to be released through Kscope on November 13. You can listen to the eight-minute plus song in full below.

"The Passage is a signature piece of the new Lunatic Soul album, on which we enter a mysterious forest full of dynamic, ritual dances," explains Duda. "The title "passage" is the destination for the main character, where he is to be cleansed and reborn. "Shaded Woods" are our worst traumas and nightmares, the most difficult moments in our life. Going through them symbolises facing and overcoming them. Through Shaded Woods is about reaching a better place in life, about giving yourself another chance.

""Shaded Woods" is also symbolic of our present, difficult times," he adds of Lunatic Soul's seventh album. "Let us hope that at the end of this dangerous path we are on, we will have become richer in new experiences, wiser and much stronger, which is my wish for everyone. May this song, as well as the whole album, be like a torch, which not only makes the darkness disappear, but might come in handy when fighting monsters.”

Unlike previous albums Fractured and Under the Fragmented Sky, Through Shaded Woods is completely devoid of electronics and is the first album in Duda’s discography, on which he plays all instruments, taking influence from dark Scandinavian and Slavic folk referencing bands like Heilung or Wardruna.

"I think I have always wanted to create an album steeped in nature and woodlands," says Dude. "These bring to my mind freedom, breathing and a dance ritual of coming back to nature, so I wanted the album to include such ritualistic primal dances, shamanic, Slavic and Viking moods. I wanted to mix it all up and put it all together, making Through Shaded Woods the most intense, dynamic and the most danceable album in my career."

Through Shaded Woods will be released on CD, a 2 disc version featuring a bonus disc of three additional tracks including a 26-minute suite called Transition 2 and black vinyl LP in gatefold sleeve and digitally.

Pre-order Through Shaded Woods.

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.