JBOT’s plan to replace his former bandmates with robots may have backfired when — according to his bio — the machines pulled off a full-scale mutiny and enslaved their former captain and creator. But, hey, it beats the hell out of playing with other people.

“You ever been in a band? Try it sometime. You’ll be making a robot band in two months,” said Captured! By Robots creator JBOT. “There’s the egos, the girlfriends, band members using drugs, people showing up late. It’s still hard to tour with a band of robots, but I think it’s easier than touring with a band of humans.”

The punk-rock octet — or solo project, depending on how you define it — sounds something akin to the Chuck E. Cheese animatronic house band playing on the banks of the river Styx. While not your typical rock band, JBOT is none too pleased with people calling it a joke.

“It pisses me off. We’re a band like anyone else’s band — it’s just that there’s one human,” he said. “Personally, I take it as a slap on the face. Sure, I didn’t know what I was doing when I started building these robots, and the first few incarnations really sucked. Over 14 years and a lot of hard work, it’s really come together. I’d put us up against any other band, human or not.”

As JBOT’s amateur engineering prowess has evolved, so have the robots and their compositions. But where does one go after that?

“I had a goal of making a kick-ass rock band with robots, and I did it. Then what?” he said. “What gets me going is having a desire to do something that no one else has done and having people tell me I can’t do it. That sends me over the edge, and I have to do it. I won’t stop until it’s done.”

The next logical step: an Armageddon-themed tour in the coming year, complete with a new batch of tunes contemplating Earth’s impending end, according to the Mayan calendar.

“It’ll be one, big, possibly last tour, if we all die anyway, so I’m billing it as such,” JBOT said. “All the songs are about the end of the world and how we might possibly go: asteroid, satellite crash, alien invasion ... robot takeover.”

Photo by Snapcult