FRACTURED

Lunatic Soul's fifth outing finds the Polish wunderkind Mariusz Duda's at his best, creating a vivid tapestry of soundcapes while reeling from overwhelming loss, panic of mortality, fear, addiction, gut-wrenching grief... to construct some of the finest, most relevant, complex and heartfelt music of his career.

Duda draws upon influences as varied as modern Depeche Mode (for example, replace Duda's vocals with David Gahan's on the song "Moving On" and you'd have the quintessential Ultra-era Depeche Mode sound), new wave, jazz, alternative, electronica and progressive rock, to name a few. The ethnic drone sounds and general lack of accessibility of his earlier solo efforts are out too. That's not a bad thing, trust me.

Highlights here for me are "Battlefield" and "A Thousand Shards of Heaven", which is in the running now for my favorite prog song of 2017. That's not to say that the additional material here is anything but fantastic- this album has no filler and is a must-listen beginning to end. Despite the hype, I find this album to be superior to Steven Wilson's latest, To the Bone too.

Five stars.