“Dreams are a perpetual source of pain”: MØL on their triumphantly nihilistic return

“We all have ideas of ourselves, and then when you're presented with a new reality, you kind of have to find your footing in the world again,” Kim Song Sternkopf says coolly from the break room of his day job. The contrast to the MØL vocalist’s cataclysmic live persona is the kind of new reality that will leave you trying to find your own footing.

Kim has firmly established himself as one of the leading voices in the burgeoning blackgaze scene over the past decade, thanks to his band's stunning 2018 debut JORD, and 2021’s follow-up Diorama. But five years on, Kim is coming to terms with some seismic changes that have reframed everything for him.

“I’ve been late diagnosed with ADHD” he reveals. It was a diagnosis that landed partway through writing for their new album Dreamcrush, and one that sent Kim back to square one, lyrically. “It has not remade me, but it has shifted some perspectives. Now I’m figuring out how to place myself in the world and figuring out the estrangement that each of us can feel with the things that we’ve known.”

Guitarist Nicolai Busse concurs. “Growing up, you're striving towards certain things in life that you would like to achieve, or you have certain ways of seeing yourself in the world, and we realised that that is actually not always the case.”

In fact, Nicolai won’t be joining MØL for touring duties this year, as he instead welcomes the arrival of his second child. “Dreams are a perpetual source of pain, because as soon as you finish with one dream, you're on to the next, or maybe your dream just doesn't work out. Maybe that dream that you had of touring all the time is not going to grow, because you also have all these other responsibilities.”

And therein lies the basis of Dreamcrush. Taking inspiration from the nihilistic theories of 18th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, and the never-ending search for ultimate satisfaction, it’s an album that challenges the very notion of chasing your dreams and instead urges the listener to live in the now. Their latest single CRUSH caps the album in no uncertain terms, warning that ‘a wreckage lies in loom’, while delivering their trademark mix of jubilee and melancholy, dishing up hope, defeat, joy and misery in one emotionally cathartic barrage.

As with every MØL release so far, Dreamcrush is delivered in English and Danish, allowing Kim to get his ideas out in the most effective way possible and adding a layer of mystery to proceedings. While that means that some songs will have listeners scrambling for translations, the rest of the band remains able to invoke deep emotional responses by way of glittering, soaring passages of obsidian-tipped shoegaze. Ken Lund Klejs’ drums are absolutely elastic in bridging Kim’s demonic snarls and the gorgeously crystalline guitars of Nicolai and Sigurd Kehlet, while the bass guitar of Holger Rumph Frost rumbles below the surface ready to erupt at any moment.

But as evident as MØL’s identity is on this record, Kim was at a loss during its conception. “This was the first time where I didn't have a clear view of what I was going to say,” he admits. “Art is something where you can distill your experiences and organise the chaos that surrounds you in a neat way to present the things that are hard to process. So I started to see the tracks as diary entries.

“I think we've all had different situations where our world was turned upside-down, so many of the lyrics on Dreamcrush and the songs in general support that idea of dealing with it, going with that flow, accepting whatever comes your way. Because, ultimately, your expectations can also crush you.”

Fortunately, it seems that expectations for the new album are being safely met. Across three singles – Young, Garland (“someone in the comments called it dad-gaze,” Nicolai laughs) and CRUSH – the reactions have been incredibly positive.

“This is the album that craftsman-wise, I’m the most proud of being a part of,” Kim enthuses. “I think I have personally come into my instrument in a way that I couldn’t over the past four or five years, the songwriting is tighter, we all know each other inside and out, and how to go about writing together, and just having a lot of trust in each other and our different opinions.”

“Everything is a tug-of-war at the start,” Nicolai smirks. “And that friction creates a lot of unexpected things. Some of it might be more divisive than previous stuff, which has made me quite anxious to hear the feedback, but my own judgment of the record is that I’m very satisfied with it. We come from different musical backgrounds, but it all blends together the way that it has and it’s heartwarming and affirming to see the positivity coming back to us.”

While Dreamcrush is ultimately an album that MØL wrote for themselves, Kim is finding solace in giving listeners safe refuge as well. Coming at a time of such unrest, both in their personal lives and in the wider news cycle of the world, the record became part group therapy, part personal journal and has allowed the five of them to exorcise some of the things that plagued them. None more so than Kim.

“I’ve known this about myself for years, so it’s not this mind-blowing thing,” he says. “But it’s been about accepting the parts of you that are cumbersome to everybody else, or difficult – especially when you have to do something together. Finding the meaning with what we’re doing together is pretty pivotal, and you have to be determined to still do your art, despite all the things that might be interrupting your process.”

Dreamcrush is released on January 30 via Nuclear Blast

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