Bandcamp For two albums Møl were the band who made blackgaze feel like weather: Jord and Diorama buried tremolo melodies under sheets of shoegaze reverb until the whole thing shimmered. DREAMCRUSH, their third and first for Nuclear Blast, is a different animal. The Danes have wiped the haze off the lens. The riffs are sharper, the clean vocals step forward into full choruses, and the production is bright, muscular and modern, all mid-forward guitars and triggered snap. It is the sound of a band deciding to be understood rather than felt from a distance, and that decision cuts both ways.
Taken as a modern melodic-metal record it is very good at what it does. “DREAM” opens with a wet, spacious intro that hardens into a precise, well-staged wall without turning to mush, and the frequency separation in the low mids is genuinely excellent, the bass knurled and tight under saturated rhythm guitars. “Hud” is the highlight for me because it keeps the most air: a dry, organic mix that refuses the brickwall and lets a baritone croon collide with screams over a real dynamic build. “Dissonance” pulls the same trick, an acoustic intro breathing into a hard bridge-breakdown, and both tracks prove Møl can still write the quiet-loud architecture that made their early work land.
Where it wobbles is identity. Across “Garland,” “A Former Blueprint” and the closer “CRUSH,” the band leans hard into modern melodic metalcore, sample-assisted drums, glassy top end, vocals mixed dry and dominant right on top, and a couple of moments (“CRUSH” in particular) flirt with a nu-metal bounce that the old Møl would never have touched. It is expertly made, but the loudness-first mastering flattens the micro-dynamics in the heavy passages, and the further the record travels from atmosphere the more it sounds like a lot of other well-funded metalcore. The blackgaze DNA surfaces in the tremolo runs and the ”∞” post-rock interlude, but it is a memory here, not the engine.
DREAMCRUSH is a confident, hook-heavy, immaculately produced pivot that will win Møl a bigger room and probably some of the old crowd’s side-eye. When they marry the new punch to their instinct for dynamics (“Hud,” “Dissonance”) they sound like a band who have gained clarity without losing soul. When they chase the modern-metal middle they sound merely excellent instead of singular. Worth your time either way, especially if you came to Møl for the melodies rather than the fog.
A bright, muscular, modern melodic-metal record that pushes Møl’s old blackgaze into sharper, more legible territory. “DREAM” opens wet and spacious then hardens into a precise wall with excellent low-mid separation and a tight, knurled bass. “Hud” is the standout for keeping real air, a dry organic mix that resists the brickwall and lets baritone cleans meet screams over a genuine dynamic build, and “Dissonance” does the same from an acoustic intro into a hard breakdown. The reservations are consistency and loudness: “Garland,” “A Former Blueprint” and “CRUSH” lean into sample-assisted, glassy melodic metalcore (the closer even flirts with nu-metal), and the loudness-first mastering flattens micro-dynamics in the heaviest passages. The blackgaze roots survive mostly in the tremolo runs and the ”∞” post-rock interlude.
Standout tracks: Hud, Dissonance, DREAM
