Aside from a split album with Japan’s MORTAL INCANTATION, 2020’s slow grower, Hypnagogic Hallucinations was the last we’d heard from BEDSORE… until now. When I refer to the debut as a “slow grower”, the mistake would be to view that as a bad thing, especially in this case. Neither one to chop the tail off a song unnecessarily to meet some self-enforced track length, nor to draw out a piece to the snapping point for the same reason, there was a lot going on in BEDSORE, even from the start.

And thus, it’s no real surprise that, if anything, the foursome has plunged headlong into obscure ’70s prog territory for Dreaming The Strife For Love. ‘Minerva’s Obelisque’ is awash in keys and mellotron, in the way that era’s URIAH HEEP and DEEP PURPLE had about them at times, but there’s something else happening here. There’s a warmth – a touching of the soul’s inmost in the tone – that belies the sheer virtuosity at play here. I say “at play” because it’s clear that BEDSORE is well in their comfort zone; so much so, that when, in ‘Scars Of Light’, we’re taken from a meandering (but not at all pointless) passage into something reminiscent of the chaos invoked by countrymen JACULA over a half-century ago, the band is clearly having fun.

‘A Colossus, And Elephant, A Winged Horse, The Dragon Rendezvous’ is positively cinematic, sprawling its soundscape nearly to the 12-minute mark. What you don’t realize until the end, though, is you’ve been transported elsewhere. To where? Current ENSLAVED comes to mind, ULVER’s blatant disregard for what’s “expected” of or from it, ‘Siberian Khatru’ from YES, some electrified pastoral British folk setting [7:40-8:45].

After a whirling dervish beginning, ‘Realm Of Eleuterillide’ subsides, yet only to gather steam for the sonic maelstrom to come. TERRY RILEY minimalism moves languidly alongside DON CHERRY extravagance, and not a moment sounds affected or inauthentic. ‘Fountain Of Venus’ draws the album to its dignified close, and assures both BEDSORE and Dreaming The Strife For Love a place in the lore of metal and extreme music when the word “progressive” is uttered in its truest sense.
Review By: Lord Randall

BEDSORE
Dreaming The Strife For Love
20 Buck Spin