MELANCHOLY PESSIMISM: "We make music our own way. And above all, we want to enjoy it."

Nearly thirty-five years on the scene, nine albums, hundreds of shows, and above all one thing that has never changed throughout all that time: Melancholy Pessimism have never needed to follow trends or let anyone dictate what their music should sound like. Death metal and grindcore are in their blood, but there is much more behind their extreme music than aggression alone. There is perspective, experience, humour, humility, and the joy of still being able to stand on stage after so many years and give that energy back to the people in front of it.

This time, Rebel Sound sat down with Vlasta "Killy" Mahdal. What emerged is an interview that does not merely look back at the band's history, but also opens up subjects that metal interviews often leave aside: how much a musician has to sacrifice for a band, why it may be harder today to find someone willing to stay committed to one band for the long haul, why old recordings deserve to keep their original imperfections, what gives extreme music its real power, and why a show after thirty years can feel every bit as special as the first one.

In his answers, Killy goes all the way back to the very beginning, to the first demo from 1992. He remembers fans from abroad who knew riffs from the first albums by heart, talks about creative freedom, music as therapy, and the fact that the greatest reward is still the moment when someone standing in front of the stage is genuinely moved by their music. The result is an open, at times very funny, and above all deeply human conversation with a musician who, after nearly thirty-five years on the scene, certainly does not sound like someone preparing to sum things up. Quite the opposite.

Over more than three decades of existence, you have witnessed several transformations of the Czech metal scene. If you had to sum up in one sentence the biggest change that today's musicians often overlook, what would it be, and why?

Probably the biggest change is that thanks to technology and general availability, musicians have many things much easier today, but at the same time it may be harder to find people who are truly willing to sacrifice something for a band over the long term.

When we started out, it wasn't easy even to get hold of decent instruments and gear, let alone have the money for them. You often had to save for a long time or take out a loan and then spend years paying it back just to buy a good guitar or amplifier. There was no internet, no social media, and none of today's options for home recording and promotion. You literally had to fight for a lot of things  from equipment and gigs to contacts.

Today, of course, all of that is much more accessible, which is great, but it definitely isn't easy now either. There are enormous numbers of bands, and standing out in that flood of new music may be harder than ever. I also feel that in the past there were more people willing to spend hours in the rehearsal room, constantly travel to gigs, and genuinely organise a large part of their lives around the band. Paradoxically, now it can be difficult to find a good musician who will commit fully and stay with a band long-term. A lot of excellent players also stay at home, record their own stuff in Cubase or other programs, and never really make it onto a stage at all. So the possibilities today are incomparably greater, but finding the right people and building something together for the long term may actually be a little harder.

 Your music has never sounded as though it was trying to please trends. Was there ever a moment when you consciously rejected a path that might have brought you greater popularity because it would also have meant compromising?

Yes, there were situations like that. We were told several times that if we played a little differently, toned down the heaviness, slowed things down, or used more melodic or clean vocals, we would be more accessible and maybe even get played on the radio. But changing the music just to become more popular was never something that appealed to us.

From the beginning, we mainly wanted to make music that we ourselves enjoyed. Of course, it has evolved over those nearly thirty-five years and it is still evolving, but death metal and grindcore are simply in our blood. We also went through the period in the 1990s when the grunge wave hit hard and death or thrash metal faded somewhat into the background. Some bands changed their style at the time, but we never felt any reason to do that.

Of course, we knew that with music like this we were probably never going to become stars of mainstream radio, but we never craved that either. There were, and still are, various smaller metal and underground radio stations or online platforms around the world that played us and continue to play us. Thanks to that, we sometimes discover that people know our music in places where we would never have expected it.

Even today, Germans, Poles, Austrians or French fans come up to us at festivals with old records and CDs for us to sign. I even found out that our very first demo from 1992 was played on the radio in Romania and that apparently we had almost cult status there, which of course we had absolutely no idea about at the time. I also remember one French band we once played with in Brno. After the show, over a beer, they were humming from memory and "playing with their mouths" riffs from our first two albums. That really blew me away at the time and made me incredibly happy as well.

We never had any ambition to become global stars. It is more than enough for us if our music works in our own metal world and finds its people.

When you listen to your own older recordings, do you hear a band that was constantly evolving, or a person you can barely recognise today?

Every period was different, and I think we have gone through - and are still going through - a natural evolution. When I listen to our older recordings, I wouldn't say I hear someone I can no longer recognise today. On the contrary, I still hear us there, and all the members who passed through the band over the years, only at a time when we had far less experience than we do now.

In those very first recordings, of course, I can hear certain imperfections, and there are plenty of things we would do completely differently today. Some of them might not even make it onto an album now, but that simply belongs to that period. What is interesting is that when I meet older fans who know our first albums or the very first demo, they often tell me, "Jesus, that was so great back then - that sound, that atmosphere..." And sometimes I tell them that the demo is almost impossible to listen to today because of the way it sounds. But they insist that this is exactly what is great about it, and that when they first heard it back then, many of them were completely blown away. It may sound a little funny, but I suppose that is exactly how it should be.

When we prepared reissues of older albums in the past, and likewise now, when some of them are being reissued by a Chinese label or here at home on vinyl, we talked several times in the studio with the sound engineer about doing a remaster or adjusting some things sonically. I admit that I was especially tempted with the oldest recordings, because when I listen to them today, I can obviously hear everything that could be done better.

We even tried modifying some of it, and it really did sound cleaner, more modern, and perhaps more acceptable to younger ears today. But when I listened to it, it just wasn't right. Suddenly the atmosphere of the period in which the recording was made started disappearing. So in the end we came to the conclusion that the best thing is to leave everything in its original form. The mistakes, the imperfections, and the sound of that time are all part of those recordings, and today I wouldn't change them for anything.

Extreme metal is often associated with aggression. But with you, it seems that there is more thought than anger behind the heaviness. What role do intelligence and the ability for self-reflection play, in your view, when creating truly extreme music?

Aggression obviously belongs in extreme metal, and we like it. When the music is wild, angry, and full of energy, that is exactly what we want from it. But I don't think there has to be any special kind of "intelligence" behind it. I would rather talk about life experience, a certain perspective, and perhaps the ability to look at yourself from time to time.

That can naturally show up in the lyrics as well. I spent several years living and staying in different parts of the world, travelled a lot, and met all kinds of great and interesting people. When you experience something firsthand and see it up close, you often realise that reality can look completely different from the picture you get from the media or second-hand from someone else. Those experiences somehow find their way into what we do as well.

Musically, though, we still mainly want that energy and aggression. These days I actually see it a bit as therapy too. Everything that pisses you off, bothers you, or builds up inside you during ordinary life can be let out at a show. For that hour, you free yourself from everything completely, almost as if you stripped yourself down to the bone, threw all that pressure somewhere into the clouds or straight to hell, and then wrapped yourself back up in the energy of the people in front of the stage who are screaming, running around, going crazy, and giving it all back to us.

So maybe that is our self-reflection on stage, for a while, we turn ourselves into complete idiots, beat everything out of ourselves, and then leave satisfied and as gentle as lambs.

Is there a song that fans love but that you see completely differently today than you did when it was written? What has changed over the years?

I would probably mention the song "Melancholy Pessimism". If I remember correctly, it was actually one of the very first things we ever wrote, maybe the first one of all. Of course I see it completely differently today than I did back then. When I play it or sing it, I sometimes think, this really is music from prehistoric times compared with this, old school is practically modern. But at the same time, somewhere inside I feel that it simply belongs to us.

There is a piece of the time when we were starting out in it, a piece of ourselves, and really something that has been with the band from the very beginning. It is deeply rooted somewhere in my head and my heart, and I think the fans still love it.

So even though I see it differently today than I did back then, I don't even know whether I would want to change anything about it. It is simply ours. And maybe that is exactly why we still play it.

On stage, people see the result. What is it that an ordinary fan never sees, yet in your view defines how Melancholy Pessimism functions more than anything else?

What the ordinary fan never sees should probably stay hidden. But seriously, the way Melancholy Pessimism works is mainly built on the effort of every individual musician and on the fact that all of us do this first and foremost because we genuinely love the music.

Whenever someone new joins us, I always tell them not to expect that playing with the Melancholy guys is going to make them any serious money. These days we're actually doing so well that the petrol gets paid for, we get a hot dog, a sausage or some goulash, a beer or water, and sometimes we even have a few hundred crowns left per person, so basically we're made. Most of whatever remains goes into a shared band fund, which we then use to pay for the studio, rehearsal room and other things around the band.

And this is often where you find out who really wants to do it. Someone comes in excited that they are finally going to play with Melancholy Pessimism, but then discovers that there are no big fees behind it - mainly rehearsals, gigs, travelling, and a huge amount of time you have to cut out of normal life. We all have jobs, families, children, their activities, personal responsibilities, and some of us spend practically the whole year in work clothes from morning to night. That makes it all the more about motivation and about genuinely loving this style of music.

The only real "fee" is the feeling you get when you finish an album or stand on stage and see people reacting to the music. It doesn't matter whether someone comes up to you who has been listening to us for thirty years, or a sixteen-year-old kid who only discovered us recently and buys one of our records or a T-shirt. That is still the greatest satisfaction for me.

So behind what people see on stage there is mainly a lot of time, work, and willingness to sacrifice something for it. But as long as the music still gives you joy, and that energy works between you, the band, and the people in front of the stage, then the whole thing has meaning and can genuinely fulfil you.

You have hundreds of shows behind you. Do you remember a moment during a performance when you realised something exceptional was happening, something that might never happen again?

I'll speak for myself, because I don't know how the other guys see it, but I feel that at every show. And not only at shows - I try to look at life in general that way too. Every moment is, in its own way, special and unrepeatable. Of course there are good moments and bad ones, but both belong to life.

On stage I feel it even more strongly. Every performance gives me enormous energy and joy, and when I see the people in front of the stage experiencing the music with us, I realise that this particular moment will never happen again in exactly the same way.

Maybe I'm repeating myself a little compared with the previous answers, but this is still the most important thing about playing for me  the energy between the band and the people. And as long as I can feel it, as long as I can stand on stage and have such a great group of people around me as I do now, I will want to keep doing it.

If you were given the chance today to make an album completely free of any expectations from fans, a label, or the scene, would Melancholy Pessimism sound different from the way you do now?

Every album we make is created without any expectations from the outside. Nobody pressures us, the label doesn't tell us what to play, and we don't feel that we have to fulfil some idea that fans or the scene might have. So in that sense, we have always had this freedom.

If you take our work from the first demo right up to our most recent, ninth album from 2025, every one of them sounds different. We listen to practically everything imaginable, so elements of death metal, grindcore, doom, thrash, punk and other things all appear in our music. Sometimes there is more of one thing, sometimes less, depending on the mood and on whatever we happen to be enjoying or come up with at the time.

Personally, I like a really broad spectrum of music. Apart from metal, that includes old 1980s pop, funk, techno, folklore, folk songs, sometimes brass-band music or classical music. Basically anything that makes me feel something or can get me moving. And every now and then that shows up in Melancholy Pessimism too. At the ends of albums, or elsewhere on them, we have several times made lighter outros, intros or interludes where we can really mess around. On the latest record we even have a combination of death metal and disco-techno in the closing song.

So if someone said to us today, "Now make an album with absolutely no restrictions or expectations," we'd probably answer that this is exactly how we've been making them all along. We don't need to go searching for some dream version of creative freedom, because we've had it for a long time. We make every record and every song our own way, and above all we want to enjoy it.

What musical opinion have you held for many years even though you know a lot of people will disagree with it?

My view on music is actually pretty simple everyone should listen to whatever they enjoy, and nobody should tell anyone else what is right and what isn't.

I've always compared music to food. I like schnitzel or goulash, for example, but if I ate them every day I'd probably get sick of them eventually. I think music is the same. One day I'm in the mood for death metal or grindcore, the next for punk, then disco, funk, folklore or anything else - and sometimes I just want some peace and quiet. And the more varied your own "musical diet" is, the more it can enrich you.

That variety is exactly what I think is great. I don't feel any need to convince someone that they have to listen to what I like, just as I don't want anyone trying to convince me. Music should be free above all else, and it should give each person something of their own. I don't care what kind of music it is. The main thing is that the person enjoys it.

Today practically anyone can release music. Do you think it is harder now to write a genuinely great album, or harder to get noticed amid the enormous amount of new music?

I think both are difficult today. Music has been with us for an incredibly long time; long before it was ever recorded, it was passed down from generation to generation. So I would say that every little note or melody has probably been heard somewhere at some point already. Coming up with something genuinely and completely original today is therefore not easy.

But in the past there were plenty of bands that created something genuinely new and actually helped shape entire musical styles. If I stay with heavier music, from hard rock through heavy metal, thrash metal and death metal to black metal, there were bands that came up with something original in their time and pushed music somewhere new. Every new development was original and new in its own era as those styles were taking shape and being formed. Today it is often more about different combinations, fusions of styles, and finding a new way to put together something that has already existed in some form. You can see it, for example, with various avant-garde black metal bands, and of course in other genres too. We don't consider ourselves major musical innovators either.

But even the biggest, most important, and most original bands will logically start repeating themselves a little after many years and, in a way, "feeding off themselves". On the other hand, I still love it when a band has been around for thirty or even fifty years, releases a new record, and I think, "Damn, this might be one of their best albums." So it is definitely possible to write a great record even after so many years.

And then, of course, there is the enormous amount of new music. It is easy to drown in it today. I try not to worry too much about that. I put something on and either it grabs me or it doesn't. It might be a famous band, but it could just as easily be someone completely unknown from the deepest underground. That's why I wouldn't go only by reviews, rankings, or which band currently has the most likes. You have to keep searching, because precisely where you would least expect it, you can stumble across something absolutely killer.

Is there a song by another band that ever made you think, "Damn, this is exactly what we wanted to write"? What fascinates you about it so much?

I wouldn't say we've ever listened to a song and thought, "This is exactly how we want to do it." We've never thought that way, because we do everything our own way. But if I took the question more in the sense of, "Damn, I wish we'd written this," then of course there are plenty of examples.

I could name Napalm Death, Suffocation, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Carcass, or old Brutal Truth, for example. Those bands have loads of killer tracks where what fascinates you is the energy, inventiveness, ideas, and above all the originality. They are pieces that sound so distinctive that you think nobody else could really have written them.

And I believe we also have several songs that are similarly and unmistakably ours, and that nobody else would compose and play in exactly the same way.

Sometimes it is also interesting to find out that our own work may have become an inspiration for someone else. Recently, for example, I came across an Australian band and immediately called Kocour and told him to listen to them and tell me what he thought. We agreed that they sounded great, but at the same time, in many of the ideas and approaches we heard something very familiar, something that reminded us strongly of our own work. And of course that makes you happy too.

If you could invite any musician - living or dead - onto the stage for one evening purely for the shared experience, who would it be and why them?

Oh wow, there would be a lot of them. If I were choosing mainly among singers, I'd definitely mention Lemmy, Rob Halford, Ronnie James Dio, Chuck Schuldiner, David Vincent, Frank Mullen, John Lennon, or maybe Louis Armstrong. And why not our own Karel Gott as well.

I believe every guy in the band would have his own list of favourites, and if we put them all together, it would probably make for a very interesting evening.

And why those people? Because they are or were musicians who had - or still have - something completely their own. Some helped define entire musical styles, while others became icons of their generation. To stand on stage with someone like that even once would be an incredible experience.

And our divine Karel? He was an icon, and in my opinion he remains one to this day, not only here at home. And if Louis de Funes happened to appear somewhere too and performed some little sketch for us, it would be absolutely perfect.

And finally, a more personal one. When the day eventually comes for the curtain to close on Melancholy Pessimism for good, what would you like people to say about you? Not as musicians, but as people?

It would be great if one day people said, "Damn, those were guys you could have a laugh with. They knew how to entertain us, make us happy, and fill us with loads of positive energy that we're going to miss now."

I hope, though, that curtain won't close for a very long time yet. When I eventually retire from my day job, maybe I'll have more time, so we'll start putting out records one after another and playing even more shows than we do now. But I'd better not promise that, because of course I'm talking a bit of nonsense - who knows what shape we'll be in health-wise by then and what life will even allow us to do.

That is exactly why I don't take any of it for granted. I try to enjoy all the good things life brings us, and I appreciate the fact that Melancholy Pessimism are still here after all these years, that we can keep playing and creating, and that our music still has something to say to someone.

I take it with a great deal of humility and really as an enormous piece of good fortune. To some people it may be just a small underground band, a few records and a few gigs, but thanks to it we have fulfilled so many musical wishes and dreams, and we're still fulfilling them today. And I hope we will be for a long time yet.

So if people one day remember us as a good bunch of guys who did all of this from the heart and who made people feel good, I'll be completely happy.

The conversation with Vlasta "Killy" Mahdal is a reminder of one important thing: a band's longevity is not measured only by the number of albums it has released or concerts it has played. More than anything, it is measured by whether there is still a reason to carry on after all those years. With Melancholy Pessimism, that reason can be felt in almost every answer - the joy of music, the energy of live shows, the freedom to do things their own way, and a group of people who are still willing to give a piece of their time and their lives to all of it.

And perhaps that is exactly why their story does not feel like a closed chapter of the Czech underground, but like something that is still being written. No need to chase trends, no grand speeches about a career, and no pretending that metal life is only about the stage lights. Behind those lights are rehearsal rooms, journeys, jobs, families, hundreds of hours nobody sees - and then one hour on stage, when all of it comes back in the form of energy from the people in front of the band.

If the curtain really does come down on Melancholy Pessimism one day, Killy would like people to remember them as a good bunch of guys who were fun to be around and who knew how to spread positive energy. After this interview, there is really only one thing to add: they have already been leaving exactly that kind of mark for a long time. And by all indications, they are nowhere near having said their last word.

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