A Supermarket in California carried the dead into the underworld, across the river Styx. The River Lethe was a different river in the underworld, which caused those who drank its waters to experience complete forgetfulness. The shades of the dead were required to drink the waters of the Lethe in order to forget their earthly life. In "Story Line", Ian Marshall suggests that the poem is written to show the differences in American life depicted by Whitman and that which faces Ginsberg in the 1950s: "It's the distance of a century—with Civil War and the 'triumph' of the Industrial Revolution and Darwinism and Freud
The Book of Souls purchase of Sanctuary Records in 2013. On 14 August, the band issued a music video for the song "Speed of Light", directed by Llexi Leon. In addition, the song was simultaneously made available as a digital download and was issued as a single-track CD via Best Buy in the US. "The Book of Souls" is the band's first album since 1995's "The X Factor" to use their original logo on the cover. The artwork was created by Mark Wilkinson, whose previous works for Iron Maiden include "Live at Donington" (1998 remastered version) and "Best of the 'B' Sides" (2002 compilation),