What do you do when your band falls aside however you continue to need to make music collectively? Should you had been members of middling German alt-metallers Hyrax, you gown up as zombies and make energy metallic. Clearly.
“It was all the time clear that after we did one thing new, we needed to do it collectively,” affirms frontman Felix Heldt, now fronting the lads’ bloody new challenge Dominum underneath the alias of ‘Dr Useless’. “Dominum will get again to the core of what we actually are, and right here I’m once more with my mates!”
Shaped in 2022 after Hyrax bit the mud, Dominum, accomplished by ex-Hyrax males Korbinian Benedict (AKA ‘Affected person Zero’, bass), and Jochen Windisch (AKA ‘Tommy Kemp’, guitar), plus drummer Marcos Feminella (‘Victor Hiltop’), have already contaminated giant swathes of Europe with their mash-up of Powerwolf-styled heavy metallic histrionics and grotesque, zombie fiction-inspired lyrics.
“Tommy and I mix properly collectively,” explains Felix. “Musically, we converse one language, so when he performs one thing on guitar he instantly will get me. Victor, we met alongside the highway; we requested him if he needed to put on a zombie masks and sweat onstage and he was like, ‘Certain, let’s do it!’”
Should you assume the undead schtick simply got here from one of many band’s members watching a zombie movie or TV present then…welll…really, you would be be appropriate. That is precisely what occurred. Albeit by way of a barely roundabout method courtesy of Felix’s different job as a producer, engaged on an album by Austrian pirate metallers Visions Of Atlantis (sure, there’s pirate metallic too. The place have you ever been?!)
“Day-after-day, I drove to the studio feeling like a pirate, and went dwelling with the mindset of a pirate!” Felix laughs. “Then I used to be watching The Strolling Useless and pondering, ‘There are pirate bands and Viking bands, there’s a werewolf band… why is there no zombie band?!”
In fact, technically there are already zombie bands (bear in mind Ship Extra Paramedics? And that dude actually referred to as Rob Zombie?), however that did not cease Felix and Tommy falling down a gory rabbit gap to start planning their new challenge.
“We watched zombie motion pictures, day and night time…it was quite a bit!” he laughs. Quickly, a extra crystallised (albeit much more ludicrous) thought fashioned: they’d write songs “from the mindset of a mad scientist who needs to make the world a greater place along with his zombies.”
Thus, Dr Useless was born – and Felix instantly discovered himself with a special form of problem to make his barmy protagonist click on.
“It was troublesome to actually get into the position as a result of I’m not an actor, so it took fairly a bit to develop,” he admits. “Once I was attempting to behave an excessive amount of, individuals would take a look at me like, ‘What the fuck is that this, kindergarten?’ However while you steadiness the fader again on the pure facet, individuals had been like, ‘Yeah that is fucking nice!’ It’s important to keep on with your individual factor, belief your intestine and be genuine.”
Being genuine whereas wearing Halloween costumes singing bangers about zombies is a hell of a mission assertion, however metallic has wealthy historical past for this sort of factor. From Gwar to Lordi, Powerwolf to Evil Scarecrow, many a band has made its title from embracing the ridiculous and operating with it, creating riotously entertaining music alongside the way in which.
Sadly, that did not cease Dominum from freewheeling into an existential disaster nearly instantly.
”On the primary report [2023’s Hey Living People] we didn’t know who we had been, really,” Felix says. “We had an thought: ‘OK, we’re gonna be a zombie band’. However what even is a zombie band? What can we do? What number of music will individuals settle for, how broad can we be?”
Felix needn’t have panicked: by the point 2024 follow-up The Useless Do not Die landed, Dominum had nurtured their sound past the trimmings of enjoyable however flimsy comedy metallic and into one thing far more bombastic. It is peak Euro-metal with lashings of gore. And most significantly, the songs are good. What’s to not love?
“My career is melodies,” Felix says. “That’s what retains me awake at night time, pondering, ‘Is that this the perfect I can do?’ This has been my complete profession, actually: ‘Can this be higher? Does it actually contact me?’”
Dominum’s peeling, blood-splattered anthems are actually touching metalheads. As their plague continues to brush throughout Europe, the one query left is whether or not you are gonna dash in the wrong way like Robert Carlisle in 28 Weeks Later or simply let the an infection take you.
The Useless Don’t Die is out now by way of Napalm. Dominum’s UK tour begins in Birmingham on October 21