Dilemma is what happens when the dark brooding intensity of Nine Inch Nails sneaks out for a late-night rave with the Queen of the Damned soundtrack. Today, we have an interview with them about their new EP!

You’ve described your sound as playing in the 'gothosphere'—how do you know when a song has reached that haunting, melancholic space you’re aiming for? What’s that moment like for you as a producer and an artist?

A:. It’s just a fancy way of saying that a particular song successfully hits all the dark and gothy vibes. Vibe in music is somewhat subjective, but is tied in closely with music theory and how certain key signatures evoke more or less melancholy due to the number of intervals between notes in the key, the dissonance introduced by chords as well as each key’s relationship between tension and release. That is to say that I typically know very early on in the song creation process whether a song I’m working on is going to have those dark gothy vibes or not - and whether it does or not will likely play a big factor in deciding which album to place the track on.

For the Becoming Alive EP, I purposely selected the tracks for this album to all have a strong presence of gothy vibes. However, not all Dilemma music has that, as you’ may recall of my Woken EP (2020) which is much more upbeat traditional synthpop. One of the fun things of music production though is that by adding enough distortion, edginess and industrial elements, one can eventually make even something upbeat sound dark - which is kind of an oxymoron, yet holds true nevertheless. 

Your new EP, Becoming Alive is out today. Can you walk us through your creative process for that? Was there a particular experience or inspiration that gave birth to this EP or the title track?

A: The concept for the album began around the same time I was working on my Succubus EP (2023). The Becoming Alive remake was going to be another song on that album which consisted exclusively of remakes from my 2016 album, ‘Elephant Graveyard’. However, due to how long it was taking me to get Becoming Alive to sound right, I opted to release the album without it. The transition from 2023 to 2024 is around the same time I joined the Outer Darkness collective and met with many other talented producers. During this critical time, I learned a great deal more about refining my production skills and improving the quality of my music.

Reinvigorated and with new hope for eventually achieving a professional quality to my music, I went back to work on Becoming Alive and got it to a point where I think it sounds damn good (although maybe the drums are a touch on the bright side). Once that was finished, I thought long and hard about if there were any other songs from Elephant Graveyard I wanted to remake. That led me to the next track on the EP, “You Can’t Make me (Want to Dance). The original version of this song was very dual genre and so I could have remade it by going further in either direction.

I chose an industrial pop direction and thus between Becoming Alive and this Want to Dance remake, I had two pretty darn gothy songs. It was then I decided to place the next few extremely gothy songs I’d make on the same EP with these and as each one ended up being dark in a different way, I thought that would make for a great selling point in of itself. 

The other thing that's so unique about this EP is that each of the four tracks represents a different sub-culture of goth music. Tell me more about that.

A: Right, so I was touching on that before; Becoming Alive is very much a dark club song, Want to Dance is your classic Dilemma Industrial Pop, so for the remainder of the songs on the album, I thought it would be fun to try and break into that gothosphere from a different angle for each song.

No Comment was next, more of a Dark Pop, Industrial Rock hybrid with elements of Electro Swing, and finally Peripheral which is Post-Punk, Darkwave and contains elements of 80s New Wave as well. So all the songs on the EP are hitting that gothosphere from different perspectives and what better time to release an album with the perfect darkness than Halloween? 

What are your earliest memories of being interested in goth culture and what did that look like?

A: I think I started my goth phase when I was in 9th grade. I remember returning to my elementary school for a reunion the year after we all graduated and I went decked out in full 90s mall goth attire, tripp pants, chains and all that swag. At the time I was really into Gothic Metal like Lacuna Coil, L’ame Imortelle, Dimmu Borgir, as well as the gothier side of Numetal, bands like KoRn, Spineshank, Dry Kill Logic.

That time in my life just so happened to occur right around the time that I had fully embraced pursuing songwriting and sparked my ambition to become a rock star haha. While my outer goth has been toned down in subsequent years to primarily vibes, prints, accessories and embellishments, my inner goth is going strong and the core of my musical identity is secured tightly to this goth identity.

As for goth culture, I was pretty big into the VampireFreaks chat room in the early 2000s but I never really found other goth kids to hang out with in person. When you imagine a high school movie set in the 90s or 00s, you typically only see a handful of goth kids. That was very much the case.

If you could have any artist—dead or alive—remix a track from 'Becoming Alive,' who would you choose and why?

A: Well that's a very challenging question because on one hand, the larger the following of the artist I pick, the more attention and fans I seek to acquire from the hypothetical selection. Conversely, I could pick someone that I’d really love to hear their angle and direction on one of my songs even if i wouldn’t necessarily gain as much of a following from featuring their hypothetical remix on my album. Haha - you’ll forgive me, I’ve been in full-on marketing mode for the past several months and sadly, that’s just the nature of being an artist in this Industry at present.

There is never a time when we can afford not to think about the implications of things like this. But considering this is a hypothetical, I’m going to give the answer you likely wanted from me, which would be to forget the marketing aspect and to focus on which artist I’d really love to do a remix of my music. I would absolutely LOVE to hear a Crosses or Deftones remix of pretty much any of the tracks on the album.

I am such a massive fan of Chino Moreno and his melodic tendency and style. Successfully achieving even a small portion of that Chino magic is often a measurement of how much I’ll enjoy my own music. To use a cliche, everything he touches turns to gold. Priceless black gold. 

Ok, now a few fun ones! If the songs on this EP could be translated into a fashion show or movie scene, what would they look like? Walk us through your perfect Halloween—today is Halloween after all, a perfect day for the album I might add!

A: Hmm… The perfect Halloween…
Well I reckon that would be, booking a gig to play at a goth club, doing a killer set, making eye contact with the most beautiful goth girl in the club - (maybe she’s even into pastel goth/fairy core 😍) talking to her, finding out she also makes music and pop goes the weasel, now I have a female singer for Dilemma and a face for my music project. Yeah, I’d say that would be the perfect Halloween. 

Favorite and least favorite Halloween candy?

A: This answer is definitely a cop out, and I apologize for that - but it’s very important. Screw
“Halloween Candy” and here’s why. We are adults - do you know what that means? It means we can buy chocolate and candy whenever we damn well want and we don’t need to settle for scraps and hand-outs of … candy corn or twizzlers. We can go directly to the Madelaine chocolate factory’s website and order a metric shitton of their halloween-wrapped milk chocolate pops.

And that is exactly what you should do. So to answer your question - candy corn and twizzlers are disgusting and Madelaine chocolate is the best chocolate in the world (and that includes alpine milk chocolate from switzerland). Yeah, I said it. I’ll fight you on that. 

Lastly, with 'Becoming Alive' releasing on October 31st, what’s next for Dilemma? 

A: So, so, so much more. Idk what’s happened to me - maybe I need some more hobbies in life but I’ve been making so much music I don’t even have enough albums planned to release it all. You can expect a whole lot more of Dilemma in the next few years with my next planned release being the “Velvet/Sundown” EP coming December 6th. Sundown is also a track on my next full-length album, “In Shadows” planned for February - with a side project release in between those. I am presently part of two side projects i am very excited about. One is called Midi Nation, which consists of myself and Randall Smith of Hexen Prozess.

I would describe it as “what if instead of aiming for the gothosphere, Dilemma went all-in on sexy dance music?” The other is called 9th Circle and is a really unique blend of Post Trip-Hop and Industrial, sort of like Portishead meets nine inch nails. Some really fun stuff there. That group consists of myself, pixelgrinder and Arcane Strain – all other artists in the Outer Darkness Records banner. 

Thanks for chatting with us! Is there anything else you’d like to add?

A: You really do need to try Madelaine chocolate. You’ve probably had it before and never realized because they specialize/market themselves towards holiday themed chocolates and as a result don’t sell traditional bars with their brand name on it. This is a hidden gem, I am telling you.