SPEED: “We will only ever be a hardcore band”
With their debut album ONLY ONE MODE, ethos of brotherly love and powerful live shows, SPEED’s heartfelt hardcore has revitalised their local Sydney scene and put them at the forefront of an exploding genre
“I was not meant to quit my job at 31-years-old to fucking play in a hardcore band,” SPEED frontman Jem Siow says, incredulously. “At this age we were ready to settle down. We all have long-term partners. My wife is back at home. Like, this was not on the cards.” Sitting in the passenger seat of SPEED’s van, which is littered with the tell-tale signs of touring – neck pillows, hoodies flung over headrests – Siow is coming to terms with the band’s unlikely ascent.
The five-piece from Sydney, Australia began as a passion project. “Hardcore for hardcore,” as Siow puts it. They didn’t envisage playing outside of Australia, or even releasing anything beyond their first EP, 2022’s GANG CALLED SPEED. But they’ve become one of the country’s biggest musical exports, and one of hardcore’s breakout bands at a time of unprecedented global visibility for the scene.
SPEED signed to US independent label Flatspot Records in 2020 on the strength of their first demo; they’ve worked with them ever since. They hit the UK this summer off the back of an “epic” 31-city tour of North America with US metalcore outfit Knocked Loose, playing to thousands of people on stages so big Siow felt like he was “doing a CrossFit workout” just trying to cover ground.
In recent months, they’ve had a European tour, an Australian tour with High-Vis, US festival slots – at Sound & Fury, and with Boston straight edge legends Have Heart – then a North American tour in support of their debut album, ONLY ONE MODE, which topped the ARIA Charts for Australian Albums when it was released in July. That’s only the half of it, but you get the gist: SPEED are booked and busy.
Siow describes the hardcore scene in Australia as “pretty dire” in the years leading up to SPEED’s formation. The 2000s were active, birthing international exports like Parkway Drive and fostering thriving local scenes across the country. That’s what drew Siow into hardcore as a 12-year-old: watching “Stronghold play in a youth centre, opened by three bands that were from my suburb, and they were kids that looked like me!”
By the mid-2010s, things had wound down. When SPEED formed, they branded everything ‘SPEED HARDCORE’ because “there wasn’t much literacy for what this culture is” in Sydney at the time. On the upside, the close-knit nature of the scene that did exist allowed bands to reshape it in their image. “It’s a scene that’s taken itself into its own hands, and because of that I think that it represents the modern perspective of hardcore,” Siow explains. “It’s inclusive. It’s diverse. There’s a lot of unity between different demographics.”
Until recently, SPEED’s members were working 9-5 jobs. Siow, a classically trained flautist, taught music to high schoolers for 14 years. Now, they find themselves in the whiplash position of representing the small scene they came from while navigating the growing commercial appeal of an entire subculture; playing 150-cap arts spaces in Nuremberg one night, and opening for Turnstile at L’Olympia during Paris Fashion Week the next.
Authenticity is at the forefront of SPEED’s appeal. Since the release of their 2019 demo (titled, simply, Demo 19), they’ve employed a no nonsense approach that embodies the fundamental elements of hardcore while subverting expectations. Going strictly by appearances, SPEED is a tough band. With Siow’s younger brother Aaron on bass, drummer Kane Vardon and guitarists Josh Clayton and Dennis Vichidvongsa, their sound was hard and traditional.
Siow barks over chugging riffs peppered with gang vocals and beatdowns. Their videos see them mean-mugging the camera and smashing weights in white tank tops. Their merch has an aesthetic that sits somewhere between 80s youth crew design, modern streetwear and a range of Muay Thai gear.
“When you have something that’s as tribal as hardcore can be, you're going to get a lot of people who are protective about it, and I share a lot of those feelings" - Jem Siow
That in itself challenges stereotypes about Asian masculinity — the Siows, Vichidvongsa and Vardon are all first-generation Australians, with Chinese-Malaysian, Loatian and Indian heritage respectively — but beneath the hard exterior SPEED is defined by vulnerability. They advocate for inclusivity, showing love and being yourself; for softness as strength.
Recently, Siow has started whipping out the flute on record and on stage, letting off a little trill over a breakdown before launching into a spin-kick. That fearlessness is a big reason why SPEED are resonating with fans. As one recent tweet from a fan put it: “You know how much sauce you gotta have to look hardcore while holding a flute?”
“When we started SPEED, we were at a stage where we were more comfortable with who we are as people,” Siow says. “We were like, ‘We’re just gonna fuck off all the bullshit, strip everything back and do a straight up hardcore band where we can be ourselves.’ We’ve put our whole identity into it.”
All these elements come together on ONLY ONE MODE, an album that champions “going hard in every aspect of your life, whether that’s your ambitions, your relationships, your passions.” It opens with two battle-cry flute notes before erupting in a burst of dynamic hardcore that’s as muscular as it is textured. Eschewing the notion of a frontman, each member takes lead vocals on a song.
Lyrically, it deals in sharp themes and deep emotions. REAL LIFE LOVE hammers home the friendships forged through hardcore. KILL CAP pays tribute to friends that have died by suicide. ONLY FOES… and THE FIRST TEST speak to experiences of marginalisation (“Fuck feeling foreign in my own home”) and finding yourself (“With nowhere to hide, find peace being truthful”).
On top of the flute flourishes there are DJ scratches, groove parts. These outside elements could have broadened their sound by making it more melodic, as fellow modern hardcore torchbearers Turnstile or Militarie Gun have done. In SPEED’s case, they serve to make things heavier.
“SPEED started to be nothing else but a hardcore band, and we will only ever be a hardcore band,” Siow says firmly. “When it came to this album, it was very important to us that we were doubling down on that. So whilst there are a few blemishes of otherworldly sounds, that to us is just a part of the ethos of hardcore. Putting the flute in was like, ‘One, it sounds sick, and two, I don’t give a fuck.’ It’s who I am.”
With some bands crossing over into the mainstream, while the scene internally evolves and becomes more diverse, hardcore is undergoing an intense period of change. The shows are getting bigger, there’s TikTok virality involved and there are lots of newcomers – “which is normal,” Siow says, though he notes, as far as values go, that things are growing faster than the culture can keep up with.
ONLY ONE MODE, then, functions as a love letter to the scene. “When you have something that’s as tribal as hardcore can be, you’re going to get a lot of people who are protective about it, and I share a lot of those feelings,” Siow says. “To me, hardcore is an 80-cap show with my friends where we beat the shit out of each other and then eat kebabs on the sidewalk for three hours afterwards.”
This comes with a certain burden of responsibility, but the thing that helps SPEED’s music travel so far is that it’s fun. They lean into the muscular elements of hardcore that have previously made it feel alienating and ramp them up as far as they’ll go, while broadening its image into something more three-dimensional. “You have no idea how soft I am,” Siow, an avid powerlifter, insists from the front of the van, clutching a baby pink neck pillow shaped like a rabbit.
Leveraging those macho aesthetics, their modus operandi is integrated everywhere; from the lyrics, to the merch, to the music videos. Release titles ONLY ONE MODE and GANG CALLED SPEED are rallying cries for self-acceptance and family, respectively, packaged as tough guy gang chants. Having reached a point where he has the ears of what feels like “a limitless amount” of kids, Siow spent a lot of time reflecting “on purpose and meaning” in the lead up to this record.
No stranger to the position of being able to make an impression on a young person’s life, Siow takes that privilege seriously. He describes the flute as “an incredible vehicle” that allowed him to find teaching – a “profound” experience that saw him work with some of the kids all the way from Year 3 to Year 12, watching them grow up. A bad teacher often goes unremarked upon but a good one can change lives.
“We’re not the best musicians, but the one thing we do feel that we can offer is our authenticity,” Siow continues. “As we get older and as we experience more of the music industry, we see how absent that is. In this time where hardcore is exploding more than ever, I hope that people find SPEED and understand the realness at the centre of it.”
SPEED tour North America this September, and the UK and Europe this October and November
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