OCELOT: Rock ’n’ Roll Is Made with Your Hands, Feet and Mouth

No digital simulators, no metronomes in their ears, and absolutely no compromises with the convenient trends of the modern age. Northern Moravian mainstays Ocelot have been driving their uncompromising metal machine forward since 1988, and even after downsizing to a hard-hitting trio, they remain committed to a clear philosophy: music must have balls, power and honest sweat.

In an open interview for Rebel Sound magazine, we spoke in detail with frontman and bassist Jindra about the making of their latest album Vendeta, the filming of the raw music video Rozsekáme všechno na sračku, directed by Pája Junek, and the wild behind-the-scenes realities of life on the road. Jindra also pulled no punches when criticizing lazy sound engineers, the rise of artificial intelligence and bands making excuses, while making it clear why no digital plugin will ever replace the authentic energy of glowing vacuum tubes.

In our previous interview, you said that sound engineers practically faint at the sight of your Marshall amps and two bass drums. How spoiled do you think today's metal scene has become by digital simulators and samples on stage – and why does Ocelot refuse to take that easier route?

I have to correct you slightly – I said some sound engineers, not all of them. There are sound engineers, especially at bigger events, who don't care whether we have ten Marshalls and fifty bass drums. They simply set everything up the way we want, to everyone's satisfaction. They're accommodating and nothing is a problem for them. Then there are the whiners, who keep whining about why things have to be done this way when they do them differently. And then there are outright assholes who'd prefer you to have no equipment at all and just plug your cable straight into their system (or up their ass) to make their lives easier. Because putting microphones on our drums and doing everything else is too much work for them. They can shove all that bullshit about how nobody plays like that anymore and how five watts behind us and one bass drum should be enough right up their asses too.

The second part of the question – oh, right, digital gear. We believe everyone should play whatever they want, even a comb for all we care. We play the traditional way, so nothing digital, no imitations or simulations. We simply take the sound coming out of our instruments and send it out front. Nothing more.

These days, loads of bands are experimenting with AI-generated artwork, lyrics or even entire riffs. You stick to the tradition of doing everything with your hands, feet and mouth. Can fans in 2026 still tell the difference between genuine sweat on stage and polished digital production?

That doesn't concern us either! Everything we do, we've created ourselves – the sound, riffs, lyrics and ideas. All this AI cheating has nothing to do with us. Yes, today's fans can tell the difference. You can sweat on stage with digital equipment too, but the difference lies in what you're delivering to the audience. With us, it's mainly energy, the joy of playing and the satisfaction of a well-written song. And the listeners can obviously feel that. They can tell it's not just an act, that these aren't empty gestures, but that we genuinely mean it.

Now, here's just my opinion, and I might get some stick for it: Why do drummers in so many bands insist on having a metronome clicking in their ears? Obviously because of the samples. And it's the same in the studio – why record with a metronome? Yes, it's more precise, but surely that's what we have a drummer for, to keep the rhythm steady, not to follow some machine clicking away in his ear. That makes the music cold and impersonal. And if we're musicians, we should surely be able to keep time without a metronome, shouldn't we?

The album Vendeta is already out, and you're trying out the new material live. Which of the new songs surprised you most with how quickly the crowd took to it, and which one needed a little more effort to get the audience moving?

We're already playing six songs from the new album, and I'd say they're all going down really well. We get feedback during the concerts themselves, but people also come up to us straight after the show to share their impressions of the new material. And that gives us a lot of information – important information for us, of course, because we find out how the songs affect the listeners and so on.

On Vendeta, you've brought in a Takamine 12-string guitar and an acoustic bass. Weren't you worried your die-hard fans would give you hell for going soft, or do you simply enjoy testing how far you can push your sound?

That's a funny question! But thanks for asking. The 12-string only appears on two tracks, and it's purely there to add some colour, so unless someone knows we've used it, they probably won't even notice. If you think it somehow softens our sound, absolutely not.

I didn't use an acoustic bass. It's a hollow-body semi-acoustic bass guitar that I recorded on Funebál Marš, and I think it has a fantastic, rough and uncompromising sound on that track. We enjoy experimenting with sounds and instruments, but there are limits, and we'd never allow our music to become softer. Quite the opposite.

Cutting the lineup down to a trio has apparently given you incredible freedom. Was there also a bit of an excuse in there, since it's simply easier for three people to agree than four, or was it purely about having complete freedom on stage?

Look, if we were happy having ten people on stage, there'd be ten of us playing. Right now, three suits us. You can do great things as a trio, but obviously you need skilled musicians. You have to feel the music and know exactly what to play and when, so that the passages don't sound empty. All three instruments have to complement each other constantly. Nobody can take a break, and everyone has to go full throttle. Everyone obviously has more freedom, but that also means putting in even more energy and hard work.

You mentioned that your drummer Fore was going to quit drinking. How much has that shaken up Ocelot's backstage reputation, and how much harder do the rest of you now have to drink to make up for his sobriety?

Not going to quit – he quit a long time ago. We admire him for not drinking, and we're glad, because a drunk drummer is a disaster for a concert. Ooooh, do we have some kind of reputation?

But I know what you're getting at. We really do have a reputation as a band that doesn't mess around when it comes to alcohol, and that's been with us from the very beginning. Our reputation is more that of hooligans. But that's part of rock 'n' roll, isn't it? If you want to play rock 'n' roll, you can't be some uptight intellectual. And if we let loose during a concert, we let loose after it too. We're not the kind of band that plays a show and then obediently heads straight home.

You've got another book taking shape in your head. If you completely abandoned any sense of loyalty to the band and wrote absolutely everything exactly as it happened, how many former members and managers would never speak to you again?

All of them. But they don't speak to me now anyway, and I haven't revealed a damn thing. Seriously, though, a lot of things should stay within the band, and that's where they'll stay. Forever.

You have a clear rule: "The more you mess around with a song, the more it turns to shit." But has there ever been a time when you kept polishing an idea for so long that it turned into a complete disaster and you eventually had to throw it away?

Yes, of course, absolutely! There have been loads of those. Someone would bring in an idea, and everyone would jump on it – the idea, that is – and start improving it, refining it, everyone adding their own stuff, everyone having their own vision. Then we'd keep polishing and improving it until eventually everyone felt that something just wasn't right and that the song wasn't really doing anything for them. You spend loads of time on it, and then it goes straight down the drain.

These days, we work by letting the songwriter express himself and interfering with the material as little as possible. But obviously, we all have to enjoy the song, otherwise it goes in the bin. I've already scrapped several of my own songs this way, and I don't regret it at all.

Your new video has the pretty uncompromising title Rozsekáme všechno na sračku. What were the negotiations like with director Junek Film when you came up with such a crazy idea? Has he ever told you to get lost, or does he happily encourage your madness?

Yeah, yeah, the title is uncompromising, and it simply expresses our uncompromising attitude towards what we do. Let someone else make compromises.

Director Pája Junek is a great guy. He's a musician himself and has enormous experience, so we're always happy to put ourselves in his hands and leave everything concerning the video to him. You can't be good at everything, and we can't write a music video script without cramming it full of unnecessary nonsense and bullshit. That's why we leave these things to a professional.

He's never told us to get lost. We've already made about five videos with him, and he's always happy to support our crazy ideas. In fact, he tends to exaggerate them and actively look for even more madness himself. And by now he knows us well enough to have a pretty good idea of what to expect from us...

Your driver Šnek and the rest of the crew are constantly throwing around some seriously dark humour behind the wheel. Is it even possible to survive a weekend tour with you and return to a normal job on Monday without permanent psychological damage?

Depends! The transition from a weekend on the road back to normal life is genuinely difficult. It's like suddenly finding yourself in another world. There really should be at least one day off for an exhausted musician to get reacquainted with civilian life, realise there's more to life than rock 'n' roll, and understand that he's back in civilisation, where slightly different rules apply. But that takes practice. An ordinary person probably wouldn't survive it.

Your music is raw, but you sing exclusively in Czech. What do you think makes your native language particularly tricky in heavy music, and what do you have to cut from the lyrics immediately to avoid sounding like some embarrassing agro-metal singalong?

Our native language isn't tricky in heavy music. We want to write Czech lyrics so that fans immediately understand what a song is about and can remember it. And we're basically playing for Czechs and Slovaks, so there's no reason to write lyrics in English. When we start playing elsewhere, we'll have to translate the lyrics into English.

People here keep throwing around the term agro-metal, but has anyone ever actually thought about the content of English lyrics? They're somewhat incomprehensible to people here, so a band singing in English isn't automatically labelled so-called agro-metal. After all, they're singing in English, and that's an international language... Try translating a few English lyrics sometime, and then you'll see what agro-metal really is.

Over the years, you've kicked various know-it-alls and self-appointed advisers out of the band. What was the most bizarre demand or piece of advice anyone from outside ever tried to force on you regarding your music or performances?

Oh, there's always something. Every now and then, someone comes along who has an answer for everything, has been everywhere, knows everything, loves giving advice and helping out, and above all insists it's for the good of the band. One particularly worn-out phrase is: "But I just wanted to take it to the next level."

The most bizarre demand? There have been several. For example, one former member wanted to take a rough recording home from a professional studio and mix it himself on his old laptop because he supposedly knew better than the professionals in the studio.

Then we were told to keep the stage quiet during concerts so the Marshalls wouldn't be blasting – apparently, the stage is supposed to be silent during a show. Another adviser demanded slow love songs so we'd appeal to girls, while someone else wanted us to play dance music.

All of this just shows that some people simply didn't understand what kind of band they were in or what kind of music we played.

You've mentioned soaked electrical sockets in the Orlické Mountains and a collision with a deer near Bratislava. Which concert in Ocelot's history was an absolute technical or organisational disaster, but ended up becoming a legendary experience you celebrated with drinks backstage?

My memory isn't quite that good! Once, a long time ago, we arrived at some club in Český Krumlov, carried all our gear onto the stage and went for a beer. After a while, we started wondering why the sound engineer still hadn't turned up. Where's the sound engineer? At which point the organiser said, "You mean you haven't brought one?" So we went home.

Then there have been various forgotten instruments that we left lying outside the rehearsal room before driving off to a concert, or a show at a motorcycle rally where the amplifiers were only getting about 150 volts, so they wouldn't work properly. Or the times we got so completely hammered that we couldn't play at all (but that only happened twice!).

Ocelot has been keeping the machine rolling since 1988. If a young, arrogant band came up to you today, convinced they knew everything after playing just three shows, what would be the harshest reality check you'd give them over a beer?

Ah, no, I wouldn't do that. I don't think young, arrogant bands even exist. Whenever I've had the pleasure of meeting young bands, they've been very modest, and we're always happy to help them.

I certainly don't give bands advice. I'm not a know-it-all or some self-appointed expert. Every band is different, and they have to experience things for themselves. Fall down, get up, fall down, get up, and keep doing it over and over again...

Thanks for your time and honesty! What rough but genuinely heartfelt message would you like to leave the readers of REBEL SOUND magazine and all fans of honest music?

Come to our show. We'll smash everything to fucking pieces.

No frills, no pretence, and no unnecessary words. Ocelot remains one of the few bands that don't pretend to be something they're not, delivering their music exactly as they recorded it – raw, loud and uncompromising. The new album Vendeta is out, and the band is currently putting it to the test live in clubs. If you miss the smell of glowing vacuum tubes and the honest sweat of rock 'n' roll in today's sterile world, you know where to find this Northern Moravian trio.

Matess