Jorge Rivera-Herrans, creator and producer of EPIC, a loose musical adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey recently announced the release of the fifth EP “The Underworld Saga” in a series of concept albums.

The musical, divided in 9 parts, tells the tale of Odysseus’ 20-year journey home through several challenges – being challenged by gods and monsters.

In this chapter, Odysseus and his crew travels to the underworld.  In the title song, we dive into some kind of paranoia, with the voices of the soldiers echoing Odysseus’. It creates a strange atmosphere, especially when the fallen crew mates start singing. We can also hear multiple callbacks to past songs such as Ruthlessness, Just a Man and Open Arms when Polites. According to the creator, those callbacks and lines are the last thoughts they had right before they died.

A nice nod to the rest of the saga as the Underworld Saga is the very last chapter of act 1.

On “No Longer You”, the crew meet the blind prophet Tiresias, played by Mason Olshavsky. There, he tells Odysseus of the future he sees and the outcome of his journey. It also creates a nice bridge with the last song, where Odysseus reflects on his journey and realize what he must become to make it home alive, a “Monster”. The line “Does a soldier use a wooden horse to kill sleeping Trojans cause he is vile? Or does he throw away his remorse and save more lives with guile“, is particularly telling of this duality and the way Odysseus is thinking.

More than anything, the use of motifs and repetition of the same instruments or lines is very clever. For example, in “Monster”, the first few seconds of the song has the same opening score as The Horse And The Infant and the electric guitar riff is also similar to the one in Remember Them. Two songs that are indirectly talked about in this song.

Now that we’ve reached the end of Act 1 and the first part of their journey, we only have 4 sagas left: Thunder, Wisdom, Vengeance and Ithaca.

The Thunder Saga is set to be the fifth chapter in Epic: The Musical. Thought we don’t know the release date yet, make sure to keep your eyes peeled on EPIC’s social media.