OK by popular demand… well, the demand of a few… he he… here’s an interview I did with NIGEL MELDER from MINDSNARE… for those of you not familiar with them, they’re pretty much one of the greatest hardcore bands to ever come from Australia. I brought their first LP Credulity in 1996 and it basically blew my mind!

What’s have you been up to lately?

As usual we haven’t really been doing anything because everyone is never in Melbourne at the same time. We actually working on a 7 inch that’s been in the works for five years, it got sidetracked before the last album, we finished it in May the last time when we were all together. Hopefully we’re going to record it this year but now it’s looking like it’s not going to happen. Life’s been slow.

Is it touring that makes it hard to get together?

I’m on tour a lot and Gordy’s been doing a lot with Frenzal. When I had time off, I had almost two months off, Beltsy went to Europe for seven weeks with Blood Duster and Japan. It just seems to happen that when someone is home, someone else is away, unfortunately.

How’s your release, The Death been doing?

It’s gone really well. I didn’t think that, that many people would actually be interested in what we do anymore ’cause the scene has changed so much.

I was talking to someone at the Bleeders show last night and I mentioned I was talking to you today and they were like ‘Wow! Those guys are still around? I thought they’d broke up!’

(laughs) We don’t do much anymore. The way the hardcore scene in Australia is now is finally like what it is in the States and Europe. The only bands that are popular are bands that tour, they’re the bands that keep presenting themselves to the kids which is cool, they’re the bands out there doing stuff. Kids are getting so many bands thrown at them that if bands don’t go out or aren’t able to go out and play shows, people just forget about them. That’s fine, that’s how it is. If bands are out there playing and playing well and have good songs they deserve the success. The kids are backing all the new bands.

Mindsnare have been involved in the punk/hc scene for over twelve years, what is the biggest change you’ve seen in the scene? Obviously it’s got a lot bigger.

It’s definitely got a lot bigger. I think the fashions and the trends – they come and go – we’ve seen the hardcore scene change probably five times in the last thirteen years. Now it’s all about make up and screaming, that’s cool if kids are into it. Some of those bands are good. That’s going to change again though. It’ll all be gone in two years time. That’s what happens every two years. There’s all these bands that come and go and these trends happen and it changes. As soon as something trendy and fashionable it can only last so long. It will still evolve into something else. They’ll still be a hardcore scene. I don’t think it will die the way it’s gone, it’ll just change again.

Do you have a prediction as to where it’s going to go next?

Not really because we’re sort of older guys and we know what we like and there’s a lot of new stuff that comes up and we can hear the influences and where they’ve got it from. Anything new that happens doesn’t really surprise us…. it’s just people writing songs drawing on different influences and all trying to throw different things into the mix. People strive to make different music and set themselves apart and that’s what keeps it evolving. The essence of hardcore, they’ll always be people writing aggressive, heavy music and if it stays like that then things are good.

A lot of people talk about a hardcore ‘scene’ and a hardcore ‘community’ do you think there’s a difference between a scene and a community?

I think there’s a big difference. It’s so big today but today it’s not what it used to be. I don’t think there is a great sense of community. I think there is a sense of comradery between bands that tour because they know so many people in other cities. It used to be like that back in the day but back in the day that’s all there was ever at shows. Shows weren’t as big as they are now. Some people talk about how ‘Back in the day it was amazing’ but there wasn’t this many people at shows. There wasn’t this many bands happening. You couldn’t go to a city and have twenty bands to choose from to put on one bill, it wasn’t like that. Some of these bands just continuously tour and are still able to play with different bands every time they come to a certain town, and that’s awesome! It wasn’t like that ten years ago.

Ten years ago there were three hardcore bands in every city if you were lucky. If you wanted to go back there you’d have to play with those same bands time and time again. When something gets so big it’s really hard to have a community, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just because you like that music doesn’t mean you have to subscribe to what everyone else believes. As things get bigger you… everyone shouldn’t have to think the same. When you’re talking hardcore there are so many styles that can come under the sound. Most older people will probably discount those styles and say they’re irrelevant but they still are.

It just evolves and everyone has their own idea of what hardcore is. When I first got into hardcore I listened to Sick Of It All so for me hardcore is band’s like Sick Of It All and to someone young getting into hardcore they might listen to a band like Bleeding Through and to them that’s hardcore.

Exactly! I mean Bleeding Through aren’t a hardcore band they’re a metal band as much as Parkway Drive is a metal band, it’s pretty much as Mindsnare are a metal band. Most of it is metal but guys have a hardcore background and love hardcore music. All three bands we just spoke about all love hardcore and all grew up whether it’s their ethics or that sense about them. You label yourself as that whereas the music might not necessarily… like Sick Of It All, that’s hardcore! (laughs) If you had a dictionary and was a purest half the stuff people are playing… hardcore’s a term that’s been hijacked, but that’s ok. If people are enjoying it that’s all that matters.

In the beginning what inspired you guys to start Mindsnare?

When the band started I was playing in a punk band. I came in a year later. The guy’s started the band because of their influences, because of bands like Sick Of It All. The band started in 1993. Back then there wasn’t many bands, maybe four bands or five bands playing anything like that and Mindsnare was really built on New York Hardcore like Bold and Judge stuff like that. It was just wanting to play that kind of music. There was no audience, there was no ‘We’re going to form a band and get on shows’, there was no bills to get on. There was no twelve hardcore shows every weekend. No ‘What show can we get on?’ and ‘Who do we know?’ There was nothing it was just wanting to play the music that made it happen. There’s no other reason. Back then you’d put on a show and there’d be fifty people there and it would be amazing, some people would travel interstate for a show. That’s how it was. If you put on a show now and get two hundred people, people think that’s a bad turnout ‘Fuck you dude, you’re lucky anyone wants to hear your fucking band’ you should be happy people are interested.

What’s one of the biggest changes you’ve seen in Mindsnare?

I think it really changed in 1997 when Brad left the band, he pretty much wrote everything. Once he left and we did an album called Credulity that’s when we really started writing but nothing really made sense until 2000 when Gordy joined the band and we finally had a drummer who could play what Beltsy was writing, everyone we had to that point held us back and we couldn’t do what we wanted.