FINAL BLOOD: Regina's Hollow Dominion Close a Chapter with “Lifesblood”

by Scott Roos

Hollow Dominion with new vocalist Aurel Dumont

Out on the flat prairie where the wind never really stops and the winters still mean business, heavy music finds a way to grow in the strangest places. Regina’s Hollow Dominion are proof of that. The deathcore crew from the city that rhymes with fun are about to drop their new single “Lifesblood” on March 12 - and it carries a little more weight than your average release.

This one’s a goodbye.

“Literally, yeah,” guitarist Brenden Dekeyser says with a half-laugh when the topic comes up. “Myself and Patrick, we started this band actually two years ago this month… he and I had been best friends for years.”

“Lifesblood” will be the final recorded appearance of vocalist Patrick Cross with the band. No blow-up, no backstage drama... Basically just real life doing what real life tends to do, especially out here where most musicians are juggling day jobs, long drives, and whatever the Saskatchewan economy throws at them this week.

“It was getting to… I felt it was almost too much balancing, you know, home life and two bands,” Dekeyser explains. Cross also fronts FistFight HXC, and the double duty eventually caught up. “Last month, maybe about six weeks ago he stepped away… we’re still best friends. There’s no bad blood.”

That prairie practicality shows up all through Dekeyser's NSMZ interview. No bitterness. No metal-scene theatrics. Just respect.

And maybe that’s why the new track hits the way it does.

“I’m not sure if you heard it, but you can hear the emotion in the song,” Dekeyser says. “The outro was very emotional… he knew it too. He said he kind of teared up a little bit near the end.”

You don’t always expect vulnerability in deathcore, but sometimes the heaviest moments aren’t about tuning lower. They’re about meaning something.

From Flin Flon, With Volume

Like a lot of prairie metal stories, this one starts in a small northern town where options were limited and volume knobs were not.

“I grew up in Flin Flon, Manitoba actually,” Dekeyser says. “There’s nothing… you have 12 hours drive to get to Winnipeg or the closest place is Prince Albert.”

If you know, you know.

But isolation breeds its own kind of creativity. Flin Flon might be famous for hockey as Dekeyser proudly notes the Whitney Forum’s NHL alumni wall but it also quietly turned out plenty of metal kids too.

“There’s a lot of musicians from there, too. And like, we all played metal.”

Dekeyser picked up guitar early.

“I am turning 34 on March 10th, and I’ve been playing guitar since… grade six.”

Back then, practice meant obsession.

“ I used to play six to eight hours a day.”

These days, though, life looks a little more like Saskatchewan reality. Dekeyser works as a welder and ironworker, often on the road. It's the kind of schedule that makes band practice a logistical puzzle.

“Now I might get to play guitar maybe three times a week,” he says. “And in those times I’m writing new songs for the band. It’s not even practice anymore.... it’s straight playing and writing.”

That working-class grind is baked right into Hollow Dominion’s DNA.

Raised on the Riffs

If you came up in the mid-2000s metal scene anywhere between Winnipeg and the Alberta border, Dekeyser’s musical upbringing is going to sound mighty familiar.

“We started with Lamb of God, As I Lay Dying, Atreyu… all the greats,” he says. “ (Avenged Sevenfold's) ‘Unholy Confessions’ was one of the first songs that got me into the 5-7-8 riff.”

Then came the technical side of things.

“Trivium’s Ascendancy... Oh. My. God,” he laughs. “I’ll credit my right hand… my galloping, my triplets - all that stuff - to Trivium.”

Like many prairie players of his generation, the gateway drug was a friend’s older sibling with a collection of really cool CDs.

“It was just like, holy shit, what is this?” he recalls of first hearing Korn. “That started my love for seven strings as well.”

From there, the slide into heavier territory was inevitable. There was All Shall Perish, As Blood Runs Black, the whole YouTube rabbit hole.

“At first I didn’t like deathcore… I didn’t like the screechy vocals all that much,” he admits.

“But now? The screechy vocals, the gutturals - that’s my bread and butter.”

Funny how that happens.

Prairie Deathcore, Defined

Ask Dekeyser where Hollow Dominion fits in the ever-splintering metal family tree and he doesn’t hesitate.

“I classify us as melodic deathcore,” he says. “We want to be heavy, but we want to be melodic which comes back to my metalcore roots and my melodic death metal.”

It’s a balancing act a lot of bands attempt and fewer actually pull off. Too polished and you lose the teeth. Too brutal and the songs blur together.

Canadian pioneers still loom large in his thinking.

“Despised Icon, in my opinion, they were one of the first guys who did it,” he says. “They’re the godfathers in my eyes. Especially being Canadian.”

That national pride runs quietly under the surface here. Prairie bands know they’re operating a long way from the industry spotlight, which tends to make every small win feel a little more earned.

Turning the Page

While “Lifesblood” closes the book on the Patrick Cross era, Hollow Dominion aren’t standing still. New vocalist Aurel Dumont is already in the fold, and the band is preparing to head back into the studio. Dumont, alongside Dekeyser, will be joined by guitarist Donny Ofgrief, drummer Alan Guevara Garcia and Brad Korol on bass.

“We’re projected to go in March 7th, March 8th,” Dekeyser says. “I’ll start laying down my guitar tracks… I’m hoping to have everything done by May.”

If timelines hold, new music could surface by summertime — right when Saskatchewan finally thaws out enough for touring vans to survive the highways.

Keeping It Rolling

Next up on the live front is May 7 at The Exchange in Regina with Vancouver’s Misyrion, another step in the slow prairie networking game.

“That’s what we want to do,” Dekeyser says. “We’ve been around for two years now and we want to get the networking around because we definitely want to do some touring.”

No grand illusions. No overnight-success talk. Just the steady push forward that most Western Canadian metal bands know all too well.

One Last Listen

In the end, “Lifesblood” matters because it wasn’t manufactured to be emotional. It just turned out that way.

Friendships change. Bands evolve. Life gets busy. Especially out here. But sometimes, when the timing lines up just right, you catch a moment on tape that actually means something.

Once again as Dekeyser puts it, plain and prairie-simple:

“You can hear the emotion in the song.”

When “Lifesblood” lands March 12, Hollow Dominion will officially turn the page. But if this track hits the way it sounds like it might, Patrick Cross’s final chapter with the band won’t fade quietly into the Saskatchewan wind anytime soon.