This is already your eighth album under the moniker Lunatic Soul. It is a double album. Was it the intention from the beginning or not?
I really wanted to create the album that would show the whole aspect of Lunatic Soul’s music and I realized that if I do this on a sixty minute long album, that would be too intense, too complicated. So I wanted to spread this even more and from the very beginning I really wanted to finally have in my discography something that’s called ‘double album’ in a proper way. I turned fifty this years and this is about my twentieth album that I did in my career while I composed most of the music or the entire amount of music. This should be something special, so at least a double album is something special for the artist as well. So yeah, I wanted it from the very beginning. At first I was not sure. But after several sessions we just realized that there is too much, too many songs to make, so it needs to be a double one.

When did you start with it, because the former one was in 2020?
It is a fact that I do things all the time. I am recording this in a studio from my friends. The studio is called Serakos Studios in Warsaw. My friends, Robert and Magda, have this kind of difficult Polish names, second name Srzedniccy. Anyway, with every album it was around October and I remember with ‘Fractured’ in 2017, there was one song that did not work with the album, because it was too much rocky than the rest. The rest was more electronic and this song was more alternative, more rock than the others. So I left it and it was waiting for the moment and this song is called ‘The Prophecy’ now. It is the second single. That is why it contains the music from ‘Fractured’’s time. That was 2017, but also in 2020 when I did electronic albums in the pandemic; there was one song that did not fit to the album and I really liked that. I said ‘this is too good for my electronic work, I will keep it for the next Lunatic Soul’. And this is the first single, ‘The World Under Unsun’. This is the start of the album. So basically I started this album in 2020, because I was thinking about the new Lunatic Soul at that time. Of course in between I did Riverside’s ‘ID.entity’ (2023) and I played like a hundred of shows, so it was not that I was in the studio all the time, but I was starting to think about the album. Most 2023, 2024 and most 2025 were also for this project.

I think it is better to have a longer span of time, so you can think of songs and work on the ideas you have in your mind and think about it without any rush…
That is true. Actually I wanted to release this album in 2024, but under certain circumstances I could not move on. I had some kind of issues, problems connected with my brain and that kind of stopped me, because 2024 was the first years since many, many years that I did not release anything. 2024 was nothing. I had the same year in 2012 I remember, but furthermore since the very beginning, every year there was something. So I kind of postponed it to 2025. I had the chance to make more details here and there and that is for sure better for the album.

I remember the previous one, ‘Through Shaded Woods’ was done all by yourself, but now we have the re-entry of your drummer…
Yes, because that was more of a folky approach. I could not find the drums as an instrument being in there. It would not sound good. It was that kind of music that sounds like from the dark wood or the Viking world, it is enough without drums. So I kicked out the drums and did everything by myself, but now they returned. The drummer is on the right place.

Did you ever play live with Lunatic Soul?
No, it was always a studio project. I chose not to play live with Lunatic Soul to have the chance to continue Riverside’s career in a proper way. I always recorded in between Riverside shows, but it started to change with every album, because every album started to sound – let’s say – more powerful and who knows? Maybe this is the beginning of the new life. First we have to get rid of the old life.

The meaningful lyrics need some explanation. For instance, the last track ‘The New End’ should be a very sad ending. How do you see that?
Well, the whole concept of Lunatic Soul is connected with the cycle of life and death. It is more about the journey of the main hero who is just wandering through the life and the death to the afterlife and the new life, but this particular album is mostly talking about the life under unsun which is the synonym and the symbol of mental health of the main hero. So it is not about the situation all over the world. It is all about what’s going on with the main character that he wants to abandon being in a loop. He wants to abandon toxic relationships, he wants to abandon the place that he’s stuck for many, many years. He wants to start all over, he wants to move on, but he can’t. There is always something. So that is the thing on the album. The lyrics are mostly the process of getting out of this world when there is no sun. There is more of an eclipse all the time. That symbolizes what he feels. Just imagine that you are in a violent relationship that you want to leave, but you cannot, because… I don’t know… there are some children, there are some credits, there are some houses, some places, and you cannot just turn around and leave like that. You need to spend some time. That is what songs like ‘Good Memories Don’t Want To Die’ are about. That is a story about a situation for lots of people, lots of women are just abused by men. It can be the other way as well, right? But to be honest, mostly men are those forcing giving persons. These women, if something happens like experiencing violence, why they cannot leave this relationship? Because they remember things like the first kiss, the first meeting, all this romantic stuff or they remember him crying the next day or buying flowers the very next day or saying sorry the next day, which means that he is probably sensitive and he probably wants good, so I will give him another chance and stuff like that. Over and over and those memories should die at the very beginning and what you should remember, is the fact that someone has beaten you up almost to death. But this thing we always suppress, we pretend that nothing happened. So just imagine that you are in that kind of relationship and want to leave that and suddenly, when you are leaving this, you are also saying farewell to your old life. It was not only this person, but the whole thing around it. Sometimes you need to just leave this completely. ‘The New End’ is also the song about the end of the whole cycle and the end of the whole Lunatic Soul project. That is why it had to be sad.

Instinctively I felt that the album had a kind of cycle. The melody of ‘The New End’ sounded so familiar to me that I checked if it was a reprise or not.
Well the fact is, I did that many times in Riverside, maybe you know, because I adore those things that are called ‘brackets’, like the beginning has the same title as the end. ‘After’ and ‘Before’ was on ‘Second Life Syndrome’, there was ‘Lost’ and ‘Found’ on ‘Love, Fear And The Time Machine’ there was ‘The Day After’ and ‘The Night Before’ on ‘Wastelands’. And now there was a new beginning and a new end. ‘The New End’ is the final song on the final album and ‘The New Beginning’ was the first song on the first album. So I made the whole cycle. Who knows, maybe the next one will be the new beginning.