
Invictus Records is one of my favourite record labels out there I recently reached out to the label owner and sent him some questions and he was more than happy to answer them:
You started the label in 1999. How much experience did you have in the music industry before starting your label? As we approach 2025, do you think the label will last this long?
DO: I had spent some time in the company of Tiziana from Misanthropy Records and the guys from Hammerheart Records due to my proximity to Primordial, who was on both labels in the 90s. I didn’t learn anything from them, as such, but I think that seeing them do it made me think I could do it too. I had no broader ambitions beyond putting out some cool things I liked in limited editions. Just as a way to do something, be part of the scene and express creativity.
I never expected it to last this long and it has, more or less, out of circumstance more than anything. The first decade I was doing it, it was more or less a grand hobby. I quit my job in 2006, I think it was, to try to do it full time but that was overly ambitious, primarily because I was based in Ireland without a dedicated audience or market. This was in the days when mail orders were done via email lists rather than a web store so it was very different.
That I’ve gotten 25 years into this and over 200 releases is pretty fuckin’ nice, I have to say.
How did you come up with the name and logo for the label?
DO: The name was inspired by two sources; firstly Order From Chaos song “Dawnbringer Invictus” and the Virgin Steele album “Invictus”. The word was striking and strong. It’s something that as a philosophy I identified with and so I felt it would make an appropriate label name. The original logos were all designed by Simon Berserker who, at that time, was a member of Destroyer 666. He lived in Dublin in 99 and was familiar with Photoshop and did some work for Hammerheart Records as well at the time. The horseman and spear logo was one I really felt was quite emblematic of the name Invictus. I believe it’s a statue in Spain he appropriated for the logo.
How many people work at the label currently and take me through a typical day at the label or is there not a typical day?
DO: Right now, it’s just me and my fiancé assists me. It has been me at the helm all the time but I have had a lot of friends help out over the years. Where I was previously located, I had a good friend of mine, Michelle, handling a lot of the day-to-day work as I couldn’t be in every day for a variety of reasons. A typical day is getting up around 5:45 am, checking mails, and messages and getting into HQ for 7:30 am to start the day, knowing what is ahead of me.
Processing orders is the first order of business, then working on some trades, unpacking whatever has come in and getting it on the shelves, and endless emails, texts and social media messages. There’s always accounting to be done, bills to be paid, arguments to be had and planning, plotting, organising. I usually finish in HQ around 3 pm then. I am on email/socials on and off throughout the evening then as well. I recall at one point years ago replying to emails even when I was out with friends socialising…it could be 3 am and I’d get an email and have to respond to it. But I managed to dial that back. When you are the master and commander of your ship, the responsibility envelopes you in a particular way.
Now how does it go about as far as signing bands? Are bands allowed to send you music in consideration of you putting out a release by them or does that just take up too much of your time these days? Do you have someone weed through that for you and if a band passes step 1 with the band, they get passed directly onto you?
DO: I can get anywhere from between 5 and 30 emails per week from bands looking for a release. It’s insane, to be honest, and as possibly hypocritical as this might seem, the vast majority of those bands simply should not exist. There’s too much of everything out there these days, which has ultimately led to an abomination in the “scene”. I don’t even know what the “Death Metal” scene or the “Black Metal” scene’ is anymore as there are so many offshoots, subgenres and whatnot. It’s impossible to keep up, so I don’t.
Bands do send me material all the time but I do not have the time nor interest in filling my time listening to music to “sign a band”. That feels so utterly wrong to me. Normally, I will get recommendations from people I know and trust and go from there. It doesn’t always work out, however. Some things do not appeal to me and it can be in a moment in time and there is so much out there as well these days.
I like almost everything you have released that I have heard. Does your label, would you say focus on old-school death/thrash/black metal?
DO: Well that is quite the compliment cos I don’t haha! Some releases I don’t necessarily “regret” in the broadest sense but some I look back on and think “nah”, shouldn’t have.’ But that is all a part of running a label. Death/Black/Thrash Metal would be the styles of Metal that I am most interested in. As a kid, I went from 80s rock and Maiden to Thrash (Metallica, Slayer and Venom) to Death Metal (Morbid Angel, Death, Obituary) in very quick succession and that has more or less been my artistic blueprint throughout my life. I do like other styles of Metal be it the more traditional Heavy Metal stuff or some more of the eclectic, outside-the-box material here and there like Head of the Demon, Occultation etc.
I dislike the term “old school” as it’s a term that’s deliberately limiting. Of course, bands have their influences within a certain style but even if a band is solely influenced by say “Darkness Descends”, “Infernal Overkill” and “Pleasure to Kill”, if they have their take, energy, passion and aggression on that, the music should in essence still be vital and relevant. I find that with a lot of these project-type bands, someone wants to have a band in a certain style ‘for fun’ and it occupies space that it really shouldn’t. But a band like Sacrilegia, for example, is influenced by the 80s and 90s yet they’ve got their take on it all. They’re not trying to mimic the past. They’re adapting the style for the modern world. A style might be old or have been created decades ago but it can be adapted for the modern era. I firmly believe it’s down to a band’s passion, enthusiasm, drive and motivation.

Now I live over in the US, but this interview will be published overseas, over here, music sales are down, and concert prices are through the roof. Has album sales stayed strong over there helping you as a label stay strong? Do you do much trading or is your stuff in many stores over there?
DO: The post covid world has been a fucking horror show as if the world during covid wasn’t horrific enough. Inflation has crushed most peoples’ disposable income and the cost of living has skyrocketed. I sincerely hope we can move away from this, but the first half of the 2020s has been extremely messy and difficult so I see no letup in that, currently. In early 2023, I noticed a major drop in sales. 2022 was solid and sustained sales which I felt was encouraging going into 2023, but unfortunately, things changed rapidly and the year in general was slow and poor sales-wise. I noticed that because of the vinyl production delays left over from COVID, some vinyl editions of albums I had put out on CD in 2022 moved very slowly in 2023. This was despite them getting very positive reviews and the CDs doing well.
Invictus is an underground, DIY label and while we do have official distribution worldwide via Plastic Head Music Distribution, we operate off of wholesale, the web store and of course trading. Trading has had to become more selective as I still have titles here going back years and despite the many offers daily I get for trades, I cannot accept them all. It costs me to ship a parcel of my releases and this has increased considerably since 2022! In 2022, I was able to send a 15 kg parcel to Germany for approx €27. It is now €47 for the same parcel. That’s a major increase in two years and for a small business like mine, it’s difficult to absorb, and more so if sending out trade parcels for items that, unfortunately, don’t sell as well for me.
Has the label grown the way that you had hoped it would? When someone says “Invictus Productions”, what would you hope goes through their mind?
DO: The label has grown in a way I never really planned, expected or envisioned when I started. Initially, in the very early days of the early 00s, I had hoped to do three releases by three different bands that at that time I was bang into. After the third album release I had hoped would happen, I thought to myself “OK, you’ve done it, move on!” But that wasn’t the case at all. It evolved, grew, expanded and became what it is today. Back in 2010/2011, I was in university as a mature student and at that time, we had a brutal recession here so once I finished university, there were no jobs. Invictus then became my full-time job as it managed to survive despite a massive recession globally. Back in 2011, I opened a record/tattoo shop in Dublin with some friends that we managed to keep going for 3 years until it became apparent that it was not sustainable. Was a lot of fun but once we were closing the shop, I needed to find a premises on my own, which I did and built the label up.
One thing I will speak to here is that Ireland is not a place for really underground metal. The audience just is not there. There are plenty of people into Metal around the country but it’s not a trickle down into the underground the way you have it in certain countries like say Norway or Finland, which both have comparable-sized populations. I think the peak for underground interest here in Ireland was between 2010-2020. A good decade of it but it has quietly died away, particularly in the aftermath of COVID. Gigs here do well but bringing bands here these days is nigh on impossible for me. The cost of it all has exploded. Flights, accommodation, and ground transport all combine to make it infeasible. Whether this changes in the future remains to be seen, of course, but I am sceptical. Once costs go up, it’s unlikely they come back down, even if inflation is tempered.
If someone says Invictus Productions, I’d hope that they would think “That label has put out some good gear over the years.” That’s all I can ask or hope for!
To your knowledge has anyone bootlegged any of your releases or merchandise? Have you ever been ripped off by someone via a trade, etc?
DO: Someone in Germany did a Slaughter Lord CD bootleg as I had not pressed it in quite a while. Yeah of course I have been ripped off trade-wise, but thankfully not in a long time. I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt and sometimes folks forget, as do I, given how busy things can be but the last time I recall getting ripped off was 2007. So, it has been a while, thankfully!
What are some very well-learned lessons you have learned while running a record label? How much money do you think is even spent on the lovely postage system per week?
DO: I don’t even want to consider how much I have spent on shipping over the years. I was able to send an LP worldwide with the Irish postal service in 2016 for €6. Today, the same package costs €21.50. The only justification for that is greed. Thankfully the majority of my mail goes through Deutsche Post, which while creeping up cost-wise, is still less than the Irish Postal service. Back in 2021 once Brexit had become fully locked in and was used as a reason to effectively update all shipping systems, I got shafted by Deutsche Post because they never explained the shipping options on their site, resulting in me paying extortionate prices for shipping LPs. A fact they admitted to and partly refunded me for.
Many, many lessons have been learned and in fact, are still being learned. There has been a lot of upheaval but now things have settled again somewhat and the focus is on the future, come what may. Running a small, independent record label sure brings its own challenges but it’s also incredibly enjoyable and something that is a source of immense pride, also.
What can we expect from the label going into 2025 and beyond?
DO: We have the new Grave Infestation album “Carnage Gathers” coming in early 2025 followed by the new Qrixkuor album “The Womb of the World”. After that, I expect the debut full-length from Oraculum “Hybris Divina” and Transilvani’s second album “Magia Posthuma”, Necromaniac Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable.
There are some other releases in the pipeline also but more on them in time. These 4 are definite. And I am very much looking forward to unleashing them upon mankind!
Please plug any social media and pages and your website for the label. Where can US metal fans find your label releases?
We ship worldwide whether it is one CD, one LP or larger item orders! Shipping rates from here to the US for a single LP are pretty good so US customers can order directly, but we also have Ajna, Dark Descent, Hells Headbangers, NWN and others handling our titles in the US. The label can be found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X. It is mostly active on Facebook & Instagram. We also send out a weekly newsletter via email.
Horns up for doing this interview, any last words?
DO: Appreciate you taking the time to reach out and interview me. Last words…I’ll use an Oscar Wilde quote, which I think quite fitting given the misery of today’s world; “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars!” Life’s a cruel cunt of thing and at times makes little or no fucking sense. We make of it what we will and what we do. Art and creativity is the ascension of man and so long as I draw breath, I will continue to be involved one way or another with art and creativity.