I think the previous album ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ was a solid fundament for success. After that the world opened up again, so my first question is: did the previous album came up to your (high) expectations qua success?
It was exciting for us, because the debut album was already pretty successful and everyone was into Dominum, so it seemed like ‘okay, now all eyes are on us and watching if we can deliver a second album that hopefully is as good as the first one’. So we felt kind of a positive pressure (chuckles), but luckily it was received very well. The whole world opened for us. We played so many shows and we played many news songs and the people were into it really much, so we are kind of relieved. For this record it was the same thing again. The pressure rises. The most successful someone gets and the bigger the audience gets, the more pressure you have as an artist to hopefully be able to serve those people that expect something from you. I think that sometimes you just have to free yourself and listen to your heart, because there is no chance that, as an artist, you can be liked by everyone. Sometimes you get into that carousel of thoughts like ‘he must like it, she must like it, everyone must like it’… oh no, I think we have to like it and then it can be resonated by the people hopefully and if not, it is also not the end of the world. I mean, we tried new stuff on this record. I think, in this kind of young career, because we only have three records, now that there might not be a recipe to know what you can do and what you cannot do and just listen to your heart and go with the flow a little bit instead of thinking into genres too much. I think at the end of the day it is metal music, no one cares if it is symphonic, power, true, metalcore or whatever. No one cares in the end, that’s just words.

On the new record ‘Night Is Calling’, you approached some things differently and new. Can you give an example of what was new to you?
For instance, a song like ‘The Circus Is In Town’, which was also the first single of the record, would have been kind of impossible to do it on the first record somehow, because the first record was very straight. The zombies are coming, needs to be bombastic, needs to be symphonic and right now we felt like ‘okay that is a cool groove, what can we do and how can we go with the flow?’ Stuff like this, and then the second song – also the second single – is ‘Doctor Doctor’ which is a synth wavey kind of thing. A bit hard rock maybe… but somehow no one complained. Both songs are somehow completely different, for me at least, but it seems that as soon as you have a singer that has a bit special voice maybe, that can glue some things together. Even out of different universes maybe. It can be a ballad or a hard rock song, it can be whatever. If the guy from Ghost sings it or Bruce Dickinson or Slipknot, it has a certain kind of vibe. That is a good thing and you can experiment a lot with it.

I don’t think you have to complain, because you played Wacken in the meantime. What about that experience?
(emotional) That was incredible to be honest. It was a show that we all will never forget. At the time we played Wacken it was 2025, so it was approximately one year ago, it was about the second or third year of band history and obviously our production size grew and grew, but we played on Wacken main stage which is a huge stage. Bigger bands they travel with a touring bus like big trucks and everything and we travelled with a van. So we were the only band on Wacken main stage who travelled with a van and three people crew with us – which is – it sounds a lot and it is enough for us – but when you have to glitter on a stage like this, there are certain logistical things that get quite interesting. For instance, when you travel from the backstage area to the stage, you have to ride in a car, since they drive you to service, it is so far away. If you forget something in the backstage area, you are screwed. You can’t just get over there and get your mask or whatever you miss. So you have to think very carefully ‘okay, how much time do we have left until we have to go on stage and how many times can we go back and forth’. But the show was phenomenal, it was really magical show and luckily it was recorded, so we were able to put this on our record now. I am really relieved about it, because playing the show was phenomenal but on the way back, our guitar player Tommy was driving the van and I was already, with headphones, mixing the sound for the stream. So I was really in an observing mode and I had to make the sound of the stream for the ‘on demand’ video… so I was in a very technical mode, but now, half a year later when I have prepared everything for the bons cd, I listened to the show and I was ‘oh my God, what was that like?’ and I think I had goose-bumps because it was so incredible, it was such a magical show! The place was packed with people. We couldn’t even see the horizon, because there were so many people. This is also a special thing, because we played quite early, but it was packed. So it was a very cool show.

That is a nice memory then…
Absolutely.

You invited some guests to add a special flavour in some of the songs. For instance the female singer from Battle Beast can be heard on the title track. Can you tell something about that?
Well, when we do collaborations, we want to have a story behind it. We don’t want to ask plenty people to collaborate our art let us say. With Battle Beast we played a tour that was almost forty shows, so we kind of got to know each other really well in those two months and so it was kind of our first thought, like ‘okay, this song might need some female action, it would benefit from it very much, who can we ask?’ and the first thought was ‘okay, Louhimo is out, but why don’t we do something with Marina, the new singer, wouldn’t that be an idea and I asked Jusso, the guitar player, and he said that is a fantastic idea, can you send us the song?’ I sent the song and like three minutes later it was like ‘oh it is a fantastic song’ and he explained everything to me about the song, like which chords I used – I don’t know, I don’t know a shit about that, I am very bad at music theory, but he explained it to me. So they were kind of thrilled and we recorded the vocals with Marina and I think it was fantastic. We also did a video of it and this is also going to be very cool and very unique. So yeah I think it is exciting.

And another thing is: you have a cover again, this time ‘Thriller’ from Michael Jackson. Why this song?
It was the most obvious choice to make when you are like a spooky band. Usually I go with the ‘I don’t do it, it is too obvious and it gets too ‘normal’, but here it was like ‘why should we not do it?’ It is fitting so well and also the riffing there, it sounded so well on the guitars… We thought ‘let us put it down’.