Hello everybody, we're here with THE Dr. Dead from Dominum. How are you?

Thank you, I'm doing great, but you can call me Felix, it's no problem.


Noted ! Went for it as last time you preferred the other.

Really? That must have been the maniac Dr. Dead, I'm sorry for him.
(laughters)


So, how is it going since the release of your new album Night Is Calling?

It's gone well, we got so much feedback for the record, people seem to like it, which is very relieving, because you work such a long time on a record, and then you're always scared. “Did we go too far? Did we push things too far?” But it seems like we didn't, which is great. I'm very happy. It's still crazy times, because we play festivals, and we are planning to do a lot of stuff on our Headline Tour in November and December. So, busy days.


Yeah, but great days !

So, to start, I wanted to talk about the word Night, because the title is Night is Calling but I don't feel like it's just some darkness coming up. I feel it's deeper than that. So, what is the ‘night’ to you?

Obviously it depends if you're a day person or a night person, just to begin with. But, I mean, it's a very philosophical question, we could talk about this for, I think, a few hours at least, but maybe it's interesting to give a little bit of an idea on what Night is Calling, the song, was initially about. Maybe that's a good point to start.

The night is calling, and the night stands for everyday temptations, I would say. So, wherever you go, something is calling, some little voices in your head say, “do this, do that”, and then there's the other voice on your other shoulder that says, “no, don't listen to that fool, do the right thing, or do whatever”. So, who knows what's the right thing to do, we don't know.

Maybe the first is the devil, or the other one is, you don't know. But, yeah, that is the main point about Night is Calling. Will you be a child of the night, or will you lock away yourself and be more in the daylight? That's the big question, but also, is it a bad thing to be a child of the night, or is it maybe a good thing? Who knows? I don't know either, but this is where this great question comes up, and it's fun to think about this, I think.


Yes, it is. I feel you really go deeper in the meaning when writing songs, or when creating an album. We talked about that on the last one already. You use images like creatures to talk about deeper subjects.

Absolutely. I mean, this is basically what it's about when writing music. When you write a song about being sad, you don't sing “I'm sad”, this is not how it goes.

You can, but then maybe it's not the best song in the world. On the other hand, on most love songs, the term “I love you” is not that present, because it's just boring. Then it's not lyrics. It's a good thing to say it, but in my opinion, that's not a song then.

It's always interesting to find those images, as you said, that fit in our universe and that connect with the things that I think about every day. It's always exciting to think about what moves me, what keeps me awake at night, and then try to think of something, what could be a nice image for that vision or for that picture that I have in mind.


To go back to the title track of the album, Night Is Calling, you have a feature, the new singer of Battle Beast. I could say it's very uncommon to have a feature on a title track, but you already did for the last album, so is that quite a ritual to you?

Not really, that's a coincidence, I would say. It wasn't planned to be a feature, to be really honest, but we were on tour with Battle Beast, and we were in the process of writing that song. I think Night Is Calling was probably the one that took the longest time to write, because the chorus was a little bit too weak.

And then at some point I felt like “okay, I think it's good, I think it's as good as it can be, but there is something missing”. And I was like, “okay, maybe a female touch is missing, another color is missing”. Then I thought about who could be interested in collaborating with us, and the first choice was Battle Beast, because we were on tour for almost 40 shows, which is a long time.

And then I asked the guys and asked Marina, and she was totally up for it, and then she sent the first tracks. Because it's not always given that when you plan to do a feature that it sounds good, because different voices blend in a different quality. There are voices that just sound when they sing together like two completely different worlds turning at the same time, but then there are those voices that combine and sound like one universe.

So we had to try that out and see, is the vocal range okay for Marina, is it still okay for me? Like all those boring details… But that's the whole point, because we don't want to do only a feature just for the featuring sake. That's boring and I think it doesn't lead to anything when you get someone to sing on a song just so you have a second name for Spotify or whatever.

If it's not a good song, it's not gonna be a benefit for anyone. So we obviously want to do our strongest songs and send those out to interesting people and hopefully they are interested in collaborating with us.


That's really cool to hear.
And do you have a dream collaboration?

Oh wow, that's a good question. I would say that Ghost would be a cool collaboration… or even Avatar. We met those guys at Rockharz Festival and they were such nice dudes and such a cool show.

I watched parts of the show. It was so cool and I could really tell that we kind of have something in common... It's for Avatar a little bit like for Dominum, at least in my opinion, because I can't compare Avatar to anything. I mean, obviously there are influences here and there, but there is no band that sounds like Avatar.

You see what I mean? And I think it's a little bit like that for Dominum as well, because we have a very broad bandwidth of styles that we just work with.

So we're not a modern metal band, we're not a power metal band. It's just a metal band and I think it's the same with Avatar. So it would be really fun to try out and experiment what happens if you take those two bands and merge them together.


Yes, I think it would give something really nice. Nice and fun.

Nice and fun, absolutely.


When we talked for your last album, you told me that the band was created during the Covid situation. So that during the first album you couldn't experience Dominum at its peak, but that you did for the second record. For this new one, do you feel that it follows that path and that you continue growing through experimenting ?

I think so. We played three songs live from the new record at festivals. And it was like a big experiment because we played them one day before the release.

We were kind of sure that some people know The Dead Don't Die, some know Immortalis Dominum, some know Frankenstein... But the majority of people don't know The Circus Is In Town or Nosferatu, because we played it before it was released.

So it was a big experiment ; will it connect with the people even though they don't know the song? And I can tell you, it was insane. The Circus Is In Town thing was so crazy that I couldn't believe it.

It was a cracking moment during the show ! It was a cool show, but then we played The Circus and then we played Nosferatu with a big circle pit like we never had before.


I'm really happy for you. I was at the Heavy Weekend, in France, a month ago. I was taking some photos, seeing the shows. And I gotta say, I've never seen people jump that much during your show than on The Circus Is In Town.

It was insane, right? I remember that. It was the second time we played The Circus ever.

At Heavy Weekend, we were the first band. After us was Avantasia, then it was Savatage and then it was Sabaton. So we were the first of those four bands. And you know how it is, the campsite is tempting. Or you go get another beer because no one cares about the first band. This is what some people might think on festivals, but it was packed, as you've seen. And people were jumping from front to back.

So we were super happy. Great that you were there !


Congratulations for opening the festival in such a great way. Because I also was at the festival last year and the band that opened did a great job, but not as much as you did.

Thank you very much. Those are very kind words. I appreciate you saying that.


When we talked last time, you told me that you had songs that didn't make it to The Dead Don't Die. Did some of these songs made it to Night Is Calling ?

Yes and no. There was one song that we kind of saved for this record, because we just had the feeling that the song didn't really fit the universe of the last record. So we saved this one and that’s it.

The songs that were not good enough for the last record, we also didn't put on this one, because it's pointless. A not super well written song will not get better by the years. It's even worse.

And we don't want to put out music that's 90%. This is not what we do. We always go for 100%.

And the 90% songs come automatically, not one year after. But if you know already that a song doesn't fit the whole universe, it doesn't fit the vibe, don't release it. It's pointless.


And how would you describe the universe of Dominum to someone who has never heard of you before?

It's a world to dive into, to maybe escape everyday problems, have a good time, meet good people, because we have the nicest fans in the world. We really do. Everyone's very caring.

Even though it's a zombie band and even though it's dark topics and everything, I get the feedback from the fans that everyone's getting so much good times out of it. Even though we have very dark songs, every song has its own bright core. And this is something that a lot of people get a lot of power out of, which is very cool.

It helps people to get through tough times. And then when you join a show, I mean, you've seen it. I think it's an event between the crowd and us. It's not only us playing, it's like everyone's involved. If you want it or not, you're involved. And I think that's how the universe of Dominum might sound like, if you write it down.


Sounds good !
I've seen that you were the producer of this album. So why did you choose to do it? What did it bring to the light that someone else couldn't have done?

I'm very sure that other people could have done it, but I have very good friends that I can always send stuff to when I'm too blind, when I'm too much in the artistic blindness, if you know what I mean. I don't have a very good picture from the top, like I have with other bands. It's very unfortunate.

But still, I believe that a good band nowadays needs to produce themselves on a very sophisticated level. It's not that you need to be able to mix or to master anything, but I think it really helps to get the closest to your vision that you have in mind as possible. And this includes stupid things like setting drum sounds or creating drum sounds, creating atmospheres, because no one's ever going to be as deep in the song as you are when writing it.

And it's not like in the old days where it's two guitars, drums, bass and a singer. We're not a band like this. It's a big puzzle and you need to find out which piece fits which piece and no one does it for you.

I mean, obviously, you might be able to find someone, but it's so time consuming, even for me. And I'm as close to the songs as no one is in the world. And even for me, it's a nightmare to figure this out.

And I appreciate the input from outside, but I think at this point, the core of the production is on my computer because maybe I'm also a little bit of a control freak and I really like to do it. That's the other thing.

All the keyboards and all the sounds, it's not like you tell someone “create a keyboard sound for me”. Let's think of an example : Immortalis Dominum, it took a long time to figure this out, how it sounds and to wiggle around and find the perfect balance between certain things.

And I think if you do it yourself, you get the best connection to your songs. I'm absolutely open to collaborating with anyone who wants to get in this hell with me. But I think it really helps to just be precise about your vision and to put it down as good as you can.

And obviously another thing for the first records is also that hiring a producer is also expensive. So you need to have a budget for this. And we simply had no budget for that, because then you need other things. You need to have it mixed, you need to have it blitzed and you need to blah, blah, blah… So it was also a matter of “okay, let's try to do it as good as we can on our own. And then let's see how far we can go with this.”

And last but not least, then I'll shut up. (laughters) I really like to do it, even though it's hell.


That makes sense !
I mean, when you're making music, it's not only about the music that's coming out. It's also about the process and the pleasure you take during that process.

It's all about the process. This is where the connection happens. Everyone can get Suno for, I don't know, seven euros a month and prompt in a shitty prompt and say “make a Dominum song” or “make a power metal song with zombie topics”.

And then you get a working song, but no one cares. None of the artists cares, because how can you relate to this piece of music? It doesn't end with making music. It's marketing, right? You have to do a billion reels and do social media, which is very time consuming and very power consuming. Where will you get the fire from doing that stuff when you don't have a connection to the music?

So it's all about the process. And you have to be very aware of this. I think that the process is the whole point. When you're on tour, it's a lot of grind.

I mean, obviously we do it for the show. We do it for seeing the fans, but we're off stage 23 hours a day. We sit in vans and we eat shitty food at the gas station. You know, all that stuff. But this is what it's about. If you don't like sitting around in vans and hanging out with your friends, don't do this.

You will not sustain. And when you're sitting in that van and eating a shitty burger from McDonald's, you have to remind yourself “we are living the dream right now”. And it sounds a little bit sarcastic, but in the end, it is.


And if this album were the soundtrack to a movie, what kind of movie would it be?

Wow, that's a good question. I think it could be the latest Nosferatu movie, because we have a song that's called Nosferatu and it would be really fun if this epic movie would be ruined by this.
(laughters)

That would be very fun. And maybe it would give a completely different vibe to the movie, like a way more aggressive and less aesthetic vibe. Maybe that would be fun.


Yes, it would be.
So you have the European tour coming up in a few months, starting in Paris.
Are you excited about it? What can we expect from that tour?

You have no idea. We are planning so many things. Currently I'm working on the setlist and on all the show elements that we do.

And I call our production manager every day and he always says the same thing :  “No, it's too expensive. Are you out of your mind?”

But there were some ideas that made it to the show. So we are very much looking forward to this, to being able to do a show like we have it in mind.

There's people coming for us that are engaged with the music already. Because we played so many support shows. You're always in the mindset of “OK, we need to convince those people that our music is great”.

But everyone coming there already heard Dominum before, obviously. So we don't need to convince anyone anymore. We can clearly focus on entertaining and enjoying ourselves, enjoying the music and having a big party together.
So I'm very, very looking forward to that.


I can't wait for this !

And do you have a message for the people listening to you?

Yes : Be kind to each other and the world is going to be a better place !


Everyone, tour starts November 24th in Paris, you know what to do !
Thank you for these words. Congratulations for that new album. Thank you a lot for your time today and for answering my questions. And I hope to see you on the next tour.

Thank you, that was great fun. See you on the next tour.