Dominum – interview met Felix Heldt aka Dr. Dead (vocals)
Dr. Dead: “We can make this extra mile to make it more dramatic and zombify people.”
Eind november kon je ook in Nederland al kennismaken met Dominum in het voorprogramma van Feuerschwanz en Orden Ogan, maar inmiddels hebben ze hun debuutplaat ‘Hey Living People’ (2023) overtroffen met nieuw werk. ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ is het volgende staaltje zombiemetal dat aanzet tot feesten en dat lieten we niet ongemerkt voorbijgaan. Dus hadden we een bijzonder leuk gesprek met zanger Dr. Dead (aka Felix Heldt) over het voorbije jaar en het meer metal getinte nieuwe album. Hier ga je nog van horen!
Vera Matthijssens Ι 8 januari 2025
In 2022 Dominum was founded. What can you tell about the beginning of the band and your intentions at that moment?
The band was founded during a process where we did a production with another band, which is called Visions Of Atlantis, and at the time I was really deep into that rabbit hole of pirate songs and pirate metal. I just watched some zombie series then on Netflix and I was thinking to myself: ‘why is there no zombie band?’ and then I called my friends and asked them about it. We always wanted to form another band, but we were not decided on exactly what. We decided to do a zombie band.
Of course, there are many bands in the scene and if you are new, you have to catch the attention with something…
Our main thing of course is to write good music, because this is what people love. I think if you are a zombie band, but you just have horrible songs, no one will care about your zombie band. So it is always good to have good songs, but I think it is another kind of dimension that you can give to the fans, maybe they can pick up this little thing extra. If you don’t, just listen to the music and don’t care about the zombies.
At the end of 2023, the debut album ‘Hey Living People’ came out. In retrospect, are you satisfied with the reception of that album?
Actually, to be honest, totally! I was totally happy, because most people really liked it and when we started this thing, we did not know if anyone would like it, because it was during covid-19, when we could not play a show, but literally on this first show that we had in Hamburg, together with our friends of Schattenman (they took us on tour), we did not know what was going to happen. So it was really a relief to have people applauding for us and not going ‘boeh’. We were really happy that people resonated with our music. That was great.
These first kicks are important for the spirit in the band…
Absolutely.
Did you know each other already a long time before you founded the band?
Yes. All of the people that are in the band, some of them I know more than I don’t know them. Tommy, the guitar player and also Patient Zero (bass), I know them since I’m 14.
With the first live appearances I see names like Bruce Dickinson, Avantasia, Feuerschwanz and even Peyton Parrish (I think that is pop music?). These are not the least ones… Did you tour with them as support?
Yes. From all the artists you have named, we were fortunate enough to have a slot in front of them and to play for their audiences and that is of course a great thing, when you are able to play in front of Bruce Dickinson, who is a real legend that everyone knows. Some members of my family who doesn’t listen to metal at all, they know who Iron Maiden is, right? And they know who Bruce Dickinson is, so that is a great honour to play with him together and meet him backstage. He even told us it was a great show, it is of course great when you get the opportunity to tour that much in your first year. The album was released in 2023, so basically this year we are still in our first year.
What about the writing process of the songs for the new album ‘The Dead Don’t Die’? I think there was decided to put a bit more metal into it, is that right?
I think so. It was not a conscious decision. It was more a natural thing to happen, because the first album was done during the pandemic, so we could not try out our shows. But since then we have played so many shows – around sixty I think – and during those shows, you tend to know who you are. A show is not only go on stage and do your thing, no, it is interactive, it is with the people, it is with the fans. It is like going to the therapist. He asks you two questions and then you talk for one hour straight, then you give him the money and you feel better. This is how these shows are for us. We played and then we interacted with the people and then we know better who we really are. This maybe results in the second album ‘The Dead Don’t Die’, that is the result of that process.
Who are the main writers in the band or do you all write? (because I know that you sing, you can play drums, you have recorded the album, you are producer I think)
I would say that I am always heavily part of the process of writing, but on this record I collaborated more diverse than on the first record. I always have someone that I co-write with or sent files back and forth with. Communication is very important for me, just to have some feedback. On this record I also did collaborations with for example Ben of Feuerschwanz who is a very good friend of mine. We did ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ together for example in which he is also featured luckily. That was just a cool thing, because you get together in one room and then you have the flow going and then you pingpong ideas. That was just a cool thing and I like to do that more often, because I like collaborations in which you go further than just working on your own all the time. You turn in circles all the time and if you work with someone you don’t know but you truly respect, who is on the same level with you, that can lead to very good results and very fun times. That is what happened with ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ for example.
Feuerschwanz are very popular and your single is very good, as well as the video with Ben…
Thank you very much. Ben is twice as tall as I am, he is really tall and he is also a really great person on stage. Of course you don’t want to look stupid next to him, so you give like 120%. It is just great to have someone like him standing next to you and then you try to look not so small.
Do you like making video clips or is it sometimes a bit boring?
No, it is not boring at all. It is always cool, because you always have a vision that you can discuss with the director and you have to be spot on, because you cannot do things a 100 times. When this pyro stuff is going on, it works with gas. When the gas is empty, it is over. So you have to be like spot on, but I like those situations and I also think that those video clips are a great part of Dominum. We have three more to come. We thought about four stories in total that we want to tell. It is great to see that it comes more to life when you do those kinds of video clips. We are a zombie band, so that gives us a lot of space to do crazy stuff.
The visual aspect…
Yes. It is not like we are a blues band where it is enough, where it might be enough to just perform well. We have those masks on and this make-up and stuff. Just playing well is a bit ridiculous, right? So we can make this extra mile to make it more dramatic and zombify people (laughs). Big fun! We just want to have people a good time, whether they watch a video, listen to our record or coming to a show. That is just the goal. That people feel good and are entertained.
How do you decide on which covers you are going to chose?
It is just a conscious decision, because I listen to music all the time and of course you listen to this kind of everything, but I am thinking of Dominum all the time. So even when I listen to music, I have like these Dominum glasses on where I watch everything from this perspective and then sometimes it happens that a song comes up where I think: ‘that might be cool in the Dominum style’. With the covers on this record, it is a bit of a different story, because it is the 40th birthday of the song. I think it was in February that ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ turned forty, so we just wanted to do a little homage to the Scorpions. They are crucial for everything that we do right now, so we thought it is great if they would listen to it – I am sure they didn’t – if they would have listened, that would have been a nice present maybe, to give it an own touch. Just a salute to the Scorpions for making such a great song.
The artwork was done by Michael Dorschner, but also Blake Armstrong is involved and that is a big name… He has been working with In Flames and Witherfall…
It was the first time we worked with Blake Armstrong. Michael Dorschner also did the layout for the last record. They are cool guys and we loved it, so why should we change a running system or winning team? Blake was involved into this movie poster thing, because we just thought it might be cool and Blake makes a living out of doing movie posters in Hollywood, so why not go with him? All of his stuff is mind-blowing and so was the first draft that he sent us, which was very close to what you see now. It was just a cool match. He has a good feeling for this dramatic movie look and it is a great guy, great to talk to.
You have played at Graspop and with the special edition of the album comes a bonus CD with that gig. What are your memories on the whole day at Graspop?
I was super exited, because it was the biggest show I had played in my whole life. Graspop is huge! Even though we played the first slot on the main stage, there were 60.000 people and this is a lot. I mean, I could not see the end of the crowd. We did a funny wave on the festival. When they do it, it looks kind of funny, and it just did not stop. That was just a great thing. The atmosphere and mood on that festival is also really nice and unique, a very friendly atmosphere. It was just a great day. Sun was shining, people were great and we had a lot of fun doing signing sessions. We played at the same stage as Alice Cooper! This is just weird, I will never forget that day ever.
Now even bigger festivals are in your agenda for 2025. Summer Breeze, Wacken Open Air…
It is insane actually. I really can’t believe. If you would have told my 15 years old me, I would not have believed it. Now we are doing it, right?
How did you get into the music? Is this your first band?
No, I had another band, a typical teenager band I would say, with my friends, which was also great, because this time of your youth, you don’t think about anything. When I was 16, 17 or 18, I still lived with my parents. Money did not really matter, because we just needed to get to the gig and find a room to sleep. We were even not thinking about those things. This will never happen again, this easiness about anything. This will never happen again, so that was a special time which I really love thinking back or calling the friends and talk about it. We are still in touch. It is just something unique and then some people grow up and build houses or get children, and I did a band. (chuckles) There are those crazy people like us, it is cool, it is just a cool thing to do and music is the greatest, right?
It makes us happy…
It makes us happy.
To occlude a quick overview of the plans for the near future…
We are in the middle of preparations for the tour. We are having our first headline tour around the release date, which is a big thing for us. It is the first ever headline tour that we will do. We want to make it extra cool and extra entertaining, so we try to think of many things and prepare that. Obviously we are also in a release time, so songs will be released and interviews will be done. We are quite busy at the moment actually and that is a lot of fun.
