T H E   V I O L E N Ț Ă   D O M E S T I C Ă   S T O R Y

Violență Domestică is the musick project of Dr.Winter, a versatile artist based in Graz, Austria.

The pseudonym Dr.Winter was chosen around 2002. "Doctor" stands for the need to explore and understand things that seem banal and unimportant to most people, "Winter" stands for the apathy, depression, melancholy and coldness that he often feels. The name Violență Domestică means domestic violence in Romanian. It was inspired by things Dr.Winter has seen in his surroundings, though the main reason for the name was because it's "home made". Inspired by inventive music like Ministry, Ulver, Laibach and Mike Patton's projects, the intention was to sound like no other band did before.

After some unsuccessful tries, which are not worth a mention, Violență Domestică was born in 2004 after Dr.Winter came into possession of some cheap music software and started recording his ideas. Because he wasn't very familiar with computers at that time, he lost all of the raw data for 17 songs by mistake, only the audio files were left over and so they became the first demo, which had the fitting title "Teratogen 1.0". A teratogen is any medicine, chemical, infectious disease or environmental agent that could interfere with the development of a fetus during pregnancy. Exposure to a teratogen may result in the loss of the pregnancy, a birth defect or pregnancy complications. Common teratogens are alcohol and cigarettes for example, and Violență Domestică's music was meant to be a new one.

The second try resulted in the EP "A Drama in seven Pieces", which was released in January 2007 on Arcana Noctis' second release "Static Noise Lullabies", a 3 way Ambient/Noise/Experimental split, featuring Ethodius from the United States and Sphere from Finland.

In January 2008 the demo single "Purification" was released, with the intention to include it on the first full length album, but instead of working on the album, Dr.Winter concentrated on some remixes for friends and the production of another EP called "Watching you suffer is fun". The EP featured cover versions of Depeche Mode's "Stripped/Breathing in Fumes", Wildecker Herzbuben's "Herzilein" and Marusha's "Over the Rainbow". It was released in April 2009 for free, to avoid copyright problems.

In 2008 the music video and an accompanied DVD single for the slightly reworked song "Room 79" from the first EP, were released. The video got banned from YouTube because of violation of their policy on violent or graphic content, but it can still be found in other places on the internet.

In September 2008 "Cephalaea" was announced as the title for the first full length album. Many ideas were gathered at that time, but Dr.Winter wasn't confident enough about anything, neither the quality of the demos nor the direction he wanted to head to, so the next release was a single again: "Inevitable Course" was also announced as part of "Cephalaea" and was released in June 2011 as a DVD single in a handmade digipak, limited to 20 hand numbered copies. A music video was also made for the song.

A video teaser for "Cephalaea", which featured excerpts of songs he was working on, was released in January 2013. The not so serious release date announcement was 2029. After that, Dr.Winter lost interest in making music, mainly because it was very time consuming to concentrate on the details, the hardware and the software. He focused on other types of art, as well as album covers, layouts and music videos for various bands. Some years of musical inactivity have passed until in 2017 he decided to resume the work on the song "Rendeadvous with Jane Doe", which he started almost 10 years earlier. It was released as a digital single in 2018, again announced as part of the album. While working on "Rendeadvous with Jane Doe" he learned a lot about mixing and producing, so he decided to work on the full length album again.

After quitting his regular job in 2018 he had plenty of time to concentrate on the debut album. Countless hours of effort were put into this album to make it as perfect as possible. The previous singles have all been reworked and remixed, a professional guitarist and a proofreader were hired, and the mastering was done by Greg Chandler (Esoteric, Lychgate) at Priory Recording Studios.

The dream of an unusual album came finally true, more than 12 years after the first idea was born. "Cephalaea" offers a wide range of styles, from Ambient soundscapes, through rhythmic EBM, to harsh Noise/Industrial, but always with an original, weird touch. It was released on 11 September 2020 on two different limited vinyl variations (Blood red and Semen white) and as a six panel digisleeve CD. The CD was released in collaboration with Aesthetic Death from the U.K., a fine, small label which only concentrates on fun projects, not on money. Like always, the digital version was released for free.

At the end of 2020 Dr.Winter made the artwork for Mossadeq's album "Hospital", to which he also contributed an intro and outro with Violență Domestică. Mossadeq is the main music project of Cle Pecher, who, like Dr.Winter, also started a small label, called grazil Records. While picking up the vinyl pressings of "Hospital", Dr.Winter and Cle had the spontaneous idea to release a split album together, because they had so much in common. Some months later both had 6 songs finished. Violență Domestică's part "Zerfall" (Decomposition) is a story about getting older in a diseased world without accomplishing anything valuable and wishing to end it all. "Czech/Zerfall" was released as an 8 panel digisleeve through grazil Records/Teratogen on November 9th 2021. Exactly one year later the split album was reissued on clear vinyl in gatefold sleeve, limited to 180 copies.

While working on "Zerfall" Dr.Winter collected many ideas for new songs and together with some older sketches he started assembling the second full-length, right after the EP was finished. "Despicable" was continually developed and improved during a time span of about two years, until it was sent to mastering in February 2023. Like on the previous two releases the mastering was done by Greg Chandler at Priory Recording Studios. "Despicable" is a 79-minute-long album and contains 24 songs which deal with a selection of unpleasant people. Although it's not a concept album as such, the songs are ordered from birth to death and some lyrics are loosely connected. It was released on June 1st (Children's Day, celebrated in most Communist and post-Communist countries) on double colored vinyl (orange & red) and as a six panel digisleeve CD. Aesthetic Death again collaborated on the CD release while grazil Records co-released both formats with Teratogen. The digital version was released for free again.

At the moment Violență Domestică is working on a new album and some music video ideas.