MOTORPSYCHO & STÅLE STORLØKKEN: THE DEATH DEFYING UNICORN

After the astonishing 2010's "Heavy Metal Fruit", Motorpsycho managed to make one more step forward with this courageous creation. This is a record that makes their early days works sound like music from a different band. This is an adventurous concept album based on epic sea voyage legends, stories and books. What we have here is a hard rock group (the original trio plus a keybordist) and a jazz orchestra blending with classical instrumentation. Several other albums came in mind when I first listened to it but I cannot think of an other record with these characteristics that sounds really similar. "The Death Defying Unicorn" is not "Banquet", "Salisbury", "Lizard" or "Concert for group and orchestra". I was hesitating whether giving this 4 or 5 stars because this is a rather special hybrid. The reason I decided to give it the highest rating is that, despite all these incredible numerous progressive rock albums from the classic era (and up to today) Motorpsycho created within 2012 a unique piece of work that adds something distinguishable to our beloved music.