Words by Kevin Diers / Photo by Danielle Parsons

To say Australian hardcore band Speed has had a big year would be a wild understatement.

Fresh off their first full U.S. tour opening for one of the biggest bands in heavy music today, Knocked Loose, the band released their debut full length, Only One Mode, today. It's hard to comprehend the amount of momentum and the kind of global reach the band has garnered, all before the arrival of their first full-length album and yet it's undisputed that Only One Mode remains one of the most anticipated albums of the year. 

Knotfest spoke with vocalist Jem Siow back in February right before Speed was set to represent Sydney hardcore at Knotfest Australia. Considering how monumental the last few months have been for his band, it was only fitting to catch up with Jem about all things Speed.

Along with Flatspot Records releasing “Only One Mode” in the U.S, you’re releasing the album with Last Ride Records in Australia. How important is it to your band to maintain a relationship with a both an Australian label and an American Label.

Siow - I would say that it's built into the purpose and the mission of the band. In our camp, man, it's Last Ride and Flatspot until the end. Last Ride Records, to us, is a culmination of many, many years of hard work and pure passion without any expectation of return, just like this band. With Flatspot, they were the first label outside of Australia to really take a chance on us.

We go back to April 2020 in the peak of Covid. I couldn't even leave my house and Ricky from Flatspot signed a Sydney hardcore band off a demo. For us at Speed, we have no intentions other than being a hardcore band. And to us, these are two 100% hardcore labels, and we are very privileged to be on a journey with them.

What kind of statement do you want to make with this record?

Siow - The philosophy that goes into the title is to find your people, find yourself and go as hard as you possibly can. I think that's the philosophy that we have with the band. This is not some kind of statement that belongs to any certain dream or motivator. Find your conviction in life, but especially, find your people.

I think that the story of life is, at least in our experiences, so much more fulfilling when it's surrounded by and when it's shared with like-minded individuals. That's the experience that we've had as a hardcore band coming from the community that supported us - building a family through that experience.

You recently toured the U.S alongside Knocked Loose. Tell me about that tour. What was that experience like for the band?

Siow - Well, to give some context, this was our first full U.S tour. It was also our first real substantial tour supporting a band. Pretty much 95% of things we've ever done before that were headline shows. Also, it was the longest tour that we'd been on by almost four and a half times. So obviously with that in mind, it was such a huge learning experience. It completely blew our expectations away.

Knocked Loose treated us so well. Huge respect to them and huge respect to Loathe and Show Me The Body. We must really put respect on those three bands because we made great friends in the process. Every single person was so cool on this tour, and it made the environment feel so much more comfortable. It was admittedly foreign… we've only really ever played proper hardcore shows. So to go out in a huge mixed bill, we felt at home being around people that were just so genuine. For us as an opening band, bro, the venues were mostly packed by the time we played.

You guys were recently featured in a Nike ad in Australia. How did that come about?

Siow - We were asked by them to be the ambassadors for Air Max Day 2024 in Australia and New Zealand to help launch the new shoe, which was a new silhouette of the Air Max. As part of that, they invited us to collaborate and just make a video for the shoe. This was a huge honor for us. I know it's something that’s been worn and part of the culture for many years, Nike shoes in general, but especially in Sydney, Air Max culture is massive outside of hardcore.

A couple years ago I sat down and was having a chat with Ricky (from Flatspot Records). He was asking me about what my dreams were in this band. I said to him, “Man, it would be fucking insane if we did an Air Max Day campaign one day.”  I was told they never work with guitar music. They don't work with music in general.

When we went to this first call, they offered us a lot of crazy things. They were talking about flying us down to shoot it in the Star Wars VFX dome with all this flashy equipment. I pretty much just went into that call and just said, 'The only way that we're going to do this if we have 100% creative control. All of our own videographers. It has to have nothing but our fingerprints across the entire thing. That's the only way that we will agree to this.'

They gave pretty much 99% creative control over it. The idea was we're going to make a mosh video featuring all of our favorites who we see as the best representatives of Sydney hardcore. We had 18-year-old kids in there who were the fresh new generation and the old heads representing the old generation plus people from all the up and coming bands and our favorite moshers and friends from all over the scene. The whole camera crew and director team were all just our family, Australian hardcore people. We took this as a huge win for Australian hardcore. 

The flute is having a pretty big year. Andre 3000 put out his all-flute album and then you broke the internet by busting out a flute on a hardcore song. What’s your history with the flute?

Siow - I was given a flute when I was eight years old and going to public school with the concert band program. Every kid has an opportunity to play, you just have to think of an instrument. The flute was what I got and I just kind of never stopped. It was my first introduction to music. I just continued through high school, and I played it just like any other kid normally would. I emphasize that because I never actually had stereotypical Asian parents that pushed me to play. That wasn't my experience. It was almost the opposite. Every time I wanted to quit when I was in high school, it was my stingy Asian brain that was like, “Oh, if I quit now, my mom has spent $30 a lesson. I'm essentially just putting the money in the drain”. So, I just never stopped.

Long story short, I pursued a degree in classical flute performance, which I finished in 2013. I quickly found out that it was not my thing.  But I did find through that a vocation for teaching. So, I was a flute teacher for 14 years, up until last year. It has always been such a belabored question in my life. 'When are you going to marry the two? When are you going to add a flute to your hardcore song?' People I know outside of hardcore, who find out that I play hardcore would always ask me this question, not understanding that it's just not a common thing. My response would always be, 'Probably never.'

I'm never going to do something just for the sake of doing it if it doesn't make sense. But when we were writing this album…. there are two parts on the album that have the flute. I would listen back to the demo after I wrote these songs and I just heard this flute part, I demoed it straight away and sent it to the blokes and they loved it. Exactly what you hear on the record is exactly what I heard in my mind and what I first tried. It was the first time in 25 years of playing the flute that it actually made sense and it just came about in an organic way.

This band has really taught us, more than anything, to embrace exactly who you are as much as you can, and not to shy away from all the elements that make you who you truly are in life, despite what society might tell you. Just be you and if you are able to embrace that in an authentic way, the right energies will be attracted. 

I am a flute player. When I started playing the flute at eight, I was one of 13, and I was the only male. It was not… it's not a very masculine or strong kind of thing, you know. It was a duality. I had only a few people who knew me in my flute classical world career and the rest was from hardcore, but I kept them separate. I just couldn't marry the two together because people in this world didn't understand it. I barely even knew how to make sense of the two. But yeah…at 31 I'm putting a flute in my hardcore song because it sounds dope and it feels dope.

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Speed's debut full length, Only One Mode arrives July 12th via Flatspot Records (USA) and Last Ride Records (AUS). Order the album - HERE

Catch Speed live on the Only One Mode tour with international dates extending through the the next few months. Check the dates, cities and supporting bands listed below. Get tickets - HERE