DOMINION interview

 Hail! You describe DOMINION as a reaction against the “modern interpretation” of death metal. That's a pretty strong statement. What exactly do you think modern death metal has lost that the old version still had?

When I think of the Golden Age of Death Metal and what made those albums so great is the fact that things were much less "politically correct" back then... The albums like "Tomb of the Mutilated" by CC and "Acts of the Unspeakable" by Autopsy were without the filter. It was a much more extreme time and the bands were pushing it to the edge which is what made it interesting...

Now you have feminists whining about it. You have wimps like Blood Incantation being praised like they are the greatest thing ever. You have these really sterile productions too! I could go on and on but basically Death Metal lost its way!!! We are here to remind you why...

“The past glory of true, old-school death metal” is obviously central to DOMINION. But death metal in the late '80s and early '90s wasn't one uniform thing. Which version of that era are you actually trying to resurrect - the primitive Florida stuff, the more chaotic European material, the filthy underground demos, or something else entirely?

So basically I am taking my main influences which is the darker aspects of old school death metal and the feel of all that and sort of blending it together. So you will hear both the cut from the Slayer cloth death metal of say the Florida style and stuff like Autopsy and Incantation as well which has the more doomy vibes!

Not a lot of bands these days are riffing like "Blessed are the Sick" or "Covenant" era Morbid Angel with the whammy bending chords and I also go heavy on the pinch and squeal like a pig!

The lyrics and themes are also very over the top but I am putting a lot of thought behind this. I do it from a morbid psychology point of view. The science behind Evil type stuff... I am totally into mental disorders,  pathology, paraphilia, serial killer shit!

In America we have plenty of psychopaths to choose from and I should mention that I am going for a USA for US Death Metal sound! No Swedish sound, No HM2 pedal, No Entombed clone trendy hipster glasses.

There's always a danger when a band deliberately looks backwards that reverence turns into museum-piece worship. How do you make music that belongs to that tradition without simply recreating somebody else's 1991 record?

Believe it or not people tell me Dominion is a breath of fresh air and strangely enough I believe that to be true. We are playing old school shit while having something special to it. There is something more to the band...

You spent years developing material without a drummer. How did that affect the way the songs were written? Did working without drums force you to think about riffs and structures differently from a conventional band?

Well initially we had no drummer to play with but I would record drums and we would play it back and work on it that way. I am also a drummer so I am always thinking about it from that perspective as well...

The two-bass setup is probably the most immediately unusual thing about DOMINION. Why two bassists? Was the idea primarily about making the low end physically overwhelming, or does each bassist have a different function in the arrangements?

With the bass thing, I just could not find a second guitarist in this area so I thought it would be interesting to try it. Yes the bass players Ogre and Noctis are often times doing two different things. Ogre is more clean sound and plays with fingers and Noctis distorted with a pick... It is another reason why we stand out as a band.

Has the two-bass configuration ever caused problems when you're actually writing and arranging songs? At what point does adding more low end stop making the music heavier and simply make it muddy?

I think our coming album "Mortification of Thy Flesh" is a testament to why the two basses works. The album is not muddy and the guitars cut through the low end like a hacksaw! The low end is chunky and gnarly sounding! It is ugly as being sodomized with a tree branch !!!

You originally had Flagellator behind the kit and eventually brought in Claytanas for the album. What did Claytanas bring to the material that you weren't getting before? Did he change any of the songs once he became involved?

Claytanas is a veteran of Death Metal. He has been around since the 90's and played in the Death Metal bands Delusion and Desolate ( their early demos are classics! ) ... He is my favorite New England Death Metal drummer! A monster behind the kit that hits the drums fucking hard and brutal! Like the old days!

Evil Control came out as an MCD before the full-length. Looking back at that release now, does it still represent the DOMINION you are, or does Mortification of Thy Flesh feel like the point where the band's original idea finally became fully formed?

"Evil Control" is like our demo basically. It is a good introduction to the band. The full length "Mortification of Thy Flesh" is more of what my vision for Dominion is meant to be... It is fucking brutal and Evil as Hell! No filter! No political correctness! A must for fans of Barnes era CC, old Autopsy, old Deicide !!!

The band has deliberately cultivated an extremely offensive and confrontational lyrical vocabulary. Where do you see the line between genuine extremity and provocation for its own sake?

I think of an album like "Tomb of the Mutilated". I bought that on tape when I was 14 years old and was completely shocked when I heard it and read the lyrics. It was so over the top it gave me a sick feeling! That is the feeling of death metal! The spirit of Death is disturbing, upsetting, morbid and will leave you empty inside haha!

So rather than shy away from the extreme we must embrace it. I don't want my Death Metal watered down! It needs to be Sick and Depraved!

The story about your rehearsal space once being associated with Sheila LaBarre is almost too bizarre to be invented. Did discovering that history actually influence the way you thought about DOMINION, or did it simply become one of those strange pieces of local history that fitted the band's existing aesthetic perfectly?

It was crazy! We were writing the song "Sexual Sadism" when the owner of place told us about it. So I drove down the street and it is a dirt road and her house is the last house on the left on a Dead End street!

She was / is a Sexual Sadist that would prey on vulnerable men and lure them to her property where she killed them and burned them in a fire pit ... She sounds like modern day Feminism! Lmaoooo!!!

It was just a strange synchronicity. Too strange!!! A sign perhaps...

More generally, do you think real-world ugliness is more interesting to you than fictional horror? Your material seems to blur that line quite deliberately.

Most of the lyrics are about real shit!  I am less into fantasy and more into the grisly ugly reality of it all. It is all the more disturbing... No romanticism here! Just Filth!

You also ended up rehearsing in a space where GG Allin had worked. For a band so obsessed with the more degenerate side of underground culture, that's quite a coincidence. Does that kind of history actually mean something to you, or are these places simply rooms where you happen to make music?

Yeah we rehearse I think less than a mile from where GG lived. Just a disclaimer that I am not sure if he practiced in the same rehearsal space but he was always hanging out and playing on Elm street which is right where we are ! He epitomized degenerate punk so I am hoping we can do the same for Death Metal!

You played Forged in Defiance Fest in Texas before the full-length existed. Did putting DOMINION in front of a festival crowd change anything about the way you approached the album, or did you deliberately keep the studio material as disconnected from the live environment as possible?

For that Texas fest we just played the 4 songs off the EP as that is all we had down for live stuff at the time. It was truly awesome! Our EP was released at that gig! It was perfect timing!

The press release repeatedly uses words like “sick”, “vile”, “perverse” and “abomination”. Those words are almost part of DOMINION's vocabulary now. What still genuinely disgusts or shocks you after you've spent years surrounding yourself with extreme imagery?

I recently re watched a movie from my youth. It is called Confessions of a Serial Killer from 1985. I remember the first time I saw this when I was 15. It was shocking and gave me a sick feeling... It did not bother me nearly as much now. I have been desensetised and probably traumatized by life lol. Every once in awhile something creeps me out but not like when I was a kid.

And here's the one I'd really want answered: you say DOMINION exists to bring back the past glory of death metal. If the old death metal you worship could actually hear Mortification of Thy Flesh, what do you think it would accuse you of getting wrong?

If "Mortification of Thy Flesh" was released in 1992 it would be a genre defining classic now. You check it out and tell me... Thank you for the interview!

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