“My daughter was born last year. I think it’s the first year to be called Gen Beta,” Jay reflects as we sit on the street of busy Vinohrady, sipping our alcohol-free beers.
It’s a cool mid-week evening and the young, fashionable professionals mingle with mums and prams shuffling past wine bars, trendy food spots and a beverage collector’s spot known as Beer Geek. It’s a far cry from the attic-space punk venue in which I met Jay Kucera a few weeks ago. Yet here we are, comparing stories of fatherhood, talking heavy music legacies, and what it means to be an oldhead in the scene.
After living in Prague for more than a decade, the name Skywalker became all too familiar as being synonymous with the local alt-music scene. Jay shares that fifteen years ago, they started the band as any group of kids would – for the love of music. With time and experience, the outfit achieved moderate success for a local metalcore act, even flirting with Eurovision at one point.
As life rolled on and COVID halted live music for a few years, Skywalker eventually decided to call it a day. Jay’s love for the hardcore scene and for music never faded though. It wasn’t long before a new project, Mindgaze, was announced.
“Now, there’s no way we’re making money off of this this time!” he laughs.
So why the new band?
Jay argues, why the hell not?
“I did think about it at first, that certain people might think ‘Oh this is just Skywalker version 2 ’. But in the end I realised we were already moving towards this style of music towards the end of Skywalker anyway, so it just kind of made sense to start new”
We are joined by guitarist and former band photographer Danny Nguyen. After years documenting Skywalker on the road, Danny swapped the lenses for strings as the group of friends began this new journey as Mindgaze.
Jay explains, “We wanted to go back to the sounds of our old school favourites. We tried to keep everything strictly to guitars, drums, bass and vocals. We didn’t want to rely so much on loops or samples onstage any more.”
Danny clarifies, “While guitar sound modulations were still recorded digitally, all the sound design was done in the modelling units themselves. For example, there was one day where we spent 6 hours in the studio, just trying to get one perfect guitar sound we wanted”
This exchange reminded me of the liner notes I read on Rage Against The Machine’s self-titled album as a high school student: “No samples, keyboards or synthesizers used in the making of this recording”
When I mention this, Jay agrees that for Mindgaze, and the hardcore scene, this authenticity in the music is paramount.
“There was a trend about ten years ago to do everything digitally. That can be great as well, and Skywalker definitely did a lot of it, playing around with sounds and different ideas. It’s cool for a while. But for us now, we’re not so interested in that any more”
Danny adds, “Yeah, a lot of modern metalcore feels…too clean, too produced, you know? It’s not really for me.”
While Mindgaze’s debut EP does feature sampled voice recordings, the commitment to bare-bones yet skillfully technical instrumentation is at the forefront (having recently played at a German straight edge festival, Jay jokes that an interviewer noticed that Mindgaze love playing the straight edge chord, and asked them ‘What does being straight edge mean to you?’…”Who knew there was such a thing as the straight edge chord?”).
“Hardcore I think is the only subculture that you can find in any city around the world…you could be from Australia, or China, or India, and there’s bound to be some thriving hardcore scene. There’s never really been a more exciting time to be a part of the hardcore scene than today.”
Jay Kucera
With Jay’s reflective lyrics and ruminations on life and society, the EP is a solid punch in the gut that holds its own against bands of a much larger scale in the melodic hardcore scene today. To come out of the relatively small Prague scene makes this completely DIY record all the more impressive.
This deliberately human approach is more vital than ever at this time for independent artists. With generative AI and tech titans like Spotify pushing AI more than ever, the discourse is sending music fans searching for alternatives. Whether it’s boycotting Spotify itself, or forcing kids to venture out to their local venues, Jay and Danny agree that the human angle is something that AI can never really compete with in the hardcore scene.
“The other day, my student was telling me how she was listening to some soundtrack playlist or something, and realised it was half AI-generated. Then I found myself listening to a video game soundtrack playlist, and I noticed something just felt off about some of them. Sure enough, I looked at the artists, and sure enough, they were all AI or something. I felt kind of dirty after that, like I needed to clean my headphones”
We discuss the popularity of bands like Speed or Turnstile today, and how a legion of fans worldwide are more and more attracted to the energy of the moshpit. Whether fans discover artists on Tik Tok or through some AI-curated playlist is ultimately irrelevant, as long as they can plug into their local scene.
“Hardcore I think is the only subculture that you can find in any city around the world. Like you won’t necessarily find a pop punk scene in any random city, but you could be from Australia, or China, or India, and there’s bound to be some thriving hardcore scene. There’s never really been a more exciting time to be a part of the hardcore scene than today”
As we laugh about our age and our aching bodies in the moshpit, the intergenerational connection is another unique thing that Jay has been thinking about recently. We discuss veteran acts likeMadball, whom Skywalker opened for on several occasions in Germany around ten years ago. I also caught Madball last year in Prague, with new gens Speed supporting.
“Hardcore is also one of the few genres where age doesn’t really matter. It’s actually kind of crucial that older fans and artists keep getting involved. Bands like Terror and Madball are still touring, and playing like crazy. Look at Freddie [Cricien of Madball], he’s still absolutely killing it onstage!”
Danny also quotes Emma DePoyster of Dying Wish who shared how hardcore for her represented one of the few genres and scenes in which she could go from being a fan in the pit, to being a peer onstage with those same bands she used to attend gigs of.
“I think hardcore is also unique in that. Kids go to these shows, and they’re like part of the shows, with the moshing and mic grabs and stuff. Then they can get inspired to create their own bands. Then they get onstage as an equal, and then inspire the next generation. It’s such a cool cycle.”
As we finish our straight-edge, alcohol free drinks, some of us marching dutifully back to fatherly and family duties, (we joke about whether it’s suitable to force babies to listen to Madball and Terror instead of Cocomelon), I am reminded of the beauty of the local music scene.
Even as we get older, the passion that is found in hardcore, and inspiring the youth of tomorrow are actually inextricable from each other. Maybe this is the true secret to retaining youth forever?
Mindgaze may have just started their journey, but they’re already turning heads. Just this week, they were announced as supports for the aforementioned Speed’s headline debut in Prague later this summer (I joked with Danny years ago that we should have started an Asian-themed hardcore band called Rychlost), and they’ve had successful shows in both Germany and Czechia already. There is no doubt Mindgaze are here to stay and there’s no telling how many more musical journeys they are going to kickstart for yet another generation of hardcore kids.
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