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Named after the international icon of fantasy and imagination, UNICORN is emblazoned with the tagline "Imagination Is A Weapon". Their restlessness is nothing but a benefit for us as this record is a warm welcome back and quite the treat for those of us that have been waiting for years for that neon and chrome synthwave that they are so adept at creating. While critical reviews are a common part of music journalism, a more balanced and objective approach would provide a fairer assessment for readers. British masters of futuristic dark retrowave/synthrock with the next mighty release, driving, nuanced and catchy as it should be. To be kind, it’s a display of how limited and inflexible Gunship’s ‘80s palette truly is; to be not-so-kind, it’s a chore to get through that burns through its best ideas in the first half (charitably), and sees fit to crater any and all creative impulses for the remainder of this hour-long brick of synth buzz.GUNSHIP is so good at weaving their signature sound through so many stylistic lenses which range from dance tunes to industrial bangers and back again that one could easily assume that as this album bounces from song to song that this is a playlist rather than an album. Though this isn’t an easy listen, Body Void’s newest journey into the abyss yields a shrieking, industrial mutation of doom-metal that couldn’t fit into the blackness around them more perfectly. Here, you’ve got John Carpenter, Tim Cappello, Tyler Bates and Carpenter Brut, the appearance of all of whom feel like a roundabout way of Gunship legitimising what they’re doing without the need to stake much of a claim themselves. It just leads to an album that drags incessantly, not helped by how little variation there is the chugging synth progressions. Another five years have passed and Unicorn is upon us and it is loaded to the proverbial gills with both songs and guest artists.

It’s also a massive undertaking, asking for just over an hour of your time which is a big ask; the good news is, that Gunship mostly justify the runtime, but there’s definitely room to trim back some of their more egregious excesses. It’s one of the reasons why Unicorn’s last leg is such a drag, where Westaway’s use as a functional mouthpiece just doesn’t gel with the overall intentions.

Opener pazzesca (di cui è stato realizzato un bellissimo video a tema cyberpunk), seguita da un saggio dosaggio di brani ora sognanti e atmosferici, ora incalzanti, sempre nostalgici di un'estetica di un tempo che fu (l'introduzione di John Carpenter in Tech Noir 2 è programmatica). It features Wargasm ’s Milkie Way, who trades vocal lines with Alex Westaway throughout to electrifying effect. Regardless as a somewhat self-professed metalhead, synthwave provided some of the same release that I get from riffs and blast beats but it does so through a completely different sonic milieu. While in some cases this could be seen as a negative thing, for Unicorn and GUNSHIP in general this certainly works. Of course, there’s plenty of saxophone; it’s more prominent in some songs than others, especially the aforementioned ‘Empress of the Damned’ and late album sleeper hit ‘Nuclear Date Night’ where alongside a bluesy solo, there’s some downright stunning hooks that’ll leave grins plastered across faces in jazzy ecstasy.

At over an hour, Gunship are asking for a lot of your time with Unicorn , especially when its second half is truly trounced by its exemplary first half.

One of the potential downfalls of this genre is how it is often a rose-colored look at the past by nearly constantly invoking nostalgia. And while that’s more on those loud, isolated voices who’ll spend their time screaming at the defence of an act they have no more personal stake in than said act themselves, you have to believe that Gunship are aware of that. If there is one complaint that I have about this record is that it is perhaps a little bit too long to be comfortably consumed in one go as things can run together a little bit, especially in the final third of the album. The saxophone work by Tim Capello is stunning with collaboration also with the legendary John Carpenter. Da menzionare, infine, le collaborazioni d'eccellenza, che spaziano dall'alfiere del genere Carpenter Brut allo storico batterista degli Slayer Dave Lombardo (Monster in Paradise).