Slingshotting from the Sydney underground onto the world stage with seismic debut ONLY ONE MODE, there’s been a lot to celebrate for Speed over the last couple of years. But it’s made the experience of losing friends and processing grief feel complicated and confused. Jem Siow tells us how new EP ALL MY ANGELS captures the clarity and catharsis they’ve been craving…
Life moves fast. Speaking to Jem Siow just a couple of years ago, the Speed frontman was fixated on making hay while the sun shone. A mindset of ‘Minimum input, maximum impact’ drove the Sydney crew to extract every ounce of chaotic satisfaction from a project that had unexpectedly picked up the kind of momentum they thought couldn’t possibly endure. Now, they’re settling in for the long haul. Smashing debut ONLY ONE MODE cemented a reputation as the hardest-hitting, most unapologetically authentic superstars in a hardcore subculture skyrocketing to heights never before seen. Rampaging between mosh Meccas like Sound & Fury and mainstream mega-stages like Coachella, they’d come to see the sky really is the limit.
Beneath the surface of success, the heart and soul of their art was shining brighter than ever, too. Experiencing the turbulence of that stratospheric ascent and suffering the loss of good friends Chang-Wook ‘Aje’ Yeo, Alex Arthur and Tahmid Nurullah along the way challenged Jem to find strength with his bassist brother Aaron and their bandmates Kane Vardo, Dennis ‘D-Cold’ Vichidvongsa and Josh Clayton as well as the circle around them. The strength, solidarity and satisfaction in knowing that they’d helped their fallen comrades live life to the fullest emboldened Speed to push on and provided the basis for barnstorming new EP ALL MY ANGELS.
“When we started Speed, I had a pool of like 20 or 30 friends to who I could give my love and attention to,” Jem says of the inspiration for their most emotionally resonant and daringly experimental songs to date. “Now there are thousands. But we see them all the same. Going through loss early on, there was a lot of thinking, ‘I could’ve done this,’ or, ‘I should’ve done more.’ That’s normal. But the greatest way you can honour the memory of someone is to pay it forward and ensure that your memories and lessons learned with that person roll on. Without the people we’ve lost, I wouldn’t have the same direction that I do at the most important time in our lives.”
A couple of years ago, we spoke about that mindset of ‘Minimum input, maximum impact’ and how you’d never even thought you’d make a hardcore LP. A year on from ONLY ONE MODE, what have been the main motivations to change it up with these mind-blowing new songs?
“I love that people still remember that early philosophy of ‘Minimum input, maximum impact!’ It’s something that we still buy into. But now there’s also that philosophy of ‘Only one mode.’ The easy thing for us would’ve been to put out an album and just ride it for two or three years like a lot of bands would. The really ‘beast’ thing to do is to back it up a year down the line with something that’s even more fire. Even when the album was coming out last July we knew we wanted to run it back with something else this year. We knew it would be hard with all the touring, but we needed to raise the bar for ourselves. Even in the time between recording and the album coming out, we’d already learned so much: not just from being on the road and evolving as musicians, but from being out there together on the journey of life.”
Indeed, there’s been so much triumph, but also a lot of tragedy…
“Since the last time we spoke, we’ve had some of the best moments of our lives, but also some of the darkest and most challenging. The experience of processing grief together multiple times while also processing these incredible highs is like riding this violent rollercoaster from one day to the next. Releasing new music wasn’t just a material goal. From a spiritual standpoint, it was a cathartic opportunity to speak on things that we’ve been trying to process for a year and a half.”
How difficult is it to process grief at the same time as embracing opportunity and success? That analogy of the ‘rollercoaster’ feels painfully apt.
“Between those polarised emotions, the overwhelming feeling was one of gratitude. We lost Alex, Tahmid and Aje as well as experiencing some other difficulties in-between. It hurts. It’s shocking. It strikes you very deep. There are the normal stages of grief – shock, confusion – but when you look around and think about why it strikes you so deep it’s because of the people sharing in our feelings with us. There is an overwhelming sense of love and joy in our memories of the people that we’re celebrating on ALL MY ANGELS. They shared some of the best moments of our lives with us. And as much as those were amazing experiences for us, we know they were amazing experiences for them, too. That understanding has led to a tenfold conviction about how we lead our lives.
“The gratitude I feel falls back on the other people in Speed and those people around us, too. We lose friends, but it brings those of us still here closer together, it makes us shine all the brighter. We talk about loyalty and brotherhood and love all the time, but when someone dies and all of the best memories are wrapped up in those things, nothing feels more real. Those hardcore tropes that once felt like slogans spray-painted on a wall are now the cornerstones of our lives.”
The titles of the EP and of lead single PEACE feel like something of a step further away from the machismo with which Speed broke out. The music itself doesn’t lack in impact at all, but is it fair to say that it’s now shaped by a different, more considered intent?
“That’s a very good question. We’ve been very intentional in our story so far, promoting who we are, our personalities and values. We wanted to plant our flag, domestically and internationally, as a hardcore band, and to champion the values that go with that. I’m very confident in the delivery of a lot of the topics we address: masculinity, sexuality, racism. We feel pretty clear cut on those things. This record is the first time we’ve been specifically tapping into questions for which I don’t really have all the answers: grief and the emotions you experience when tragedy strikes. I think that’s about recognising our humanity, the imperfections of life, and how embracing the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly can be a route to real [peace]. This record has come out of some real dark moments, and there are heavier undertones, but it also comes with a lot of clarity on the unconditional love in our circle and really having no regrets about how we live our lives.”
First track AIN’T MY GAME, with those killer lyrics ‘Immune to the shit you say / Fuck your gang – and fuck you too!’ feels like a hard-edged bridge into deeper feelings elsewhere on the EP…
“AIN’T MY GAME song is born out of introspection, too. It’s about not being baited into the senselessness of certain values and politics which we, as human beings, can fall victim to. It’s about not feeling hateful or spiteful simply out of fear. It’s about knowing your values and understanding your path. It sounds like a cliché, but it’s been emboldened through experiencing mortality and recognising our [how easy it can be to waste time and energy being sucked in by all that bullshit].”
There’s a cool little elevator-music style outro on there. Where did that come from?
“We just wrote a samba style version of the chorus. We played it. I’m singing, too, just in a falsetto. And if you listen closely you can hear me playing the flute – it’s just a little Easter Egg for the fans!”
PEACE is a more sonically striking lead single. To what extent does it herald the future for Speed?
“PEACE is the song that encapsulates the greatest step forward stylistically and thematically. Sonically, ALL MY ANGELS and AIN’T MY GAME feel kinda like classic Speed – just dialled-up. PEACE is really opening up the palette and seeing what tools we can add to our kit in an artistic way. It’s definitely a stepping stone between ONLY ONE MODE and LP number two. Lyrically, it’s about the chronology of finding clarity from being lost in the noise and bullshit of everyday life and then being hit with a tragedy which puts everything on pause and pulls it all back into focus.”
The PEACE music video harks back to previous Speed clips – basically, it’s you guys throwing down in a car park – but aesthetically it feel more wintry and far cleaner. To what extent is that a reflection of what you’re trying to accomplish with the wider ALL MY ANGELS project?
“We’re more conscious than ever of letting the music and the lyrics do the talking. On previous videos, there was a choice to put our personalities on display. Previously, we’ve been outside our favourite Cantonese restaurant, on the Sydney Harbour Bridge or outside Speed HQ, just flying our flag. Now that we’re established and we’re speaking about more serious topics, we want to allow the art to speak for itself. This is the first video where we’re playing our instruments the whole video. I’m holding a mic for almost the whole thing. It was still filmed in Sydney, just under wintry grey skies. We shot in the middle of a fortnight of torrential rain, but we go lucky that day!”
Speaking of Sydney, you’ve gotten to play a hell of a lot in Australia as of late…
“That’s been a real highlight of ONLY ONE MODE. Just over halfway through this year we’ve already done, like, 40 shows in Australia. That’s insane. To put it into perspective, the first tour that Speed ever did was a four-date run in Australia. In 2022 or 2023, that was pretty much where hardcore could exist. In 2025, that’s expanded to 10 times the number of shows, with almost all Australian bands on the bills. The only act from overseas was Whispers from Thailand. It feels like such a triumph for our scene. It’s such a showcase for the development of the culture in the last five years. We’ve played with some incredible bands who are 15, 16, 17 years old who are already better than bands in their late 20s and 30s. That feels so wholesome because you step back and realise that some of these kids were 11 or 12 years old when Speed started. We all look and talk the same, but five years can be a long time for a kid coming into hardcore: finding out about the genre, going to their first show, learning some mosh moves, picking up an instrument, starting a band. Helping Australian youth hardcore develop is at the top of our list of achievements!”
You also got to play Coachella. How was that?
“Being able to dip out of regular hardcore touring with these little side quests have been a lot of fun. It was 100 per cent stepping out of our comfort zone. It did not feel like a hardcore show at all. It was actually surprising how challenging the experience was. There were hardcore kids there and people who understood what we were about, but it was such a foreign environment that we had to work hard. We didn’t want to just show up and go through the motions. We wanted to deliver a Speed show. People ask, ‘Was it wild?’ Well, it wasn’t violent like when we played Boston with Have Heart or when we played Sound & Fury. It wasn’t a battlefield. It felt more like I was a personal trainer whipping people up to speed at five in the morning…”
You’re about to head out on tour with Turnstile, your punky fellow Aussies Amyl And The Sniffers and rising digicore star Jane Remover. Given the less overtly punchy sound of Turnstile’s latest output, will that feel like another challenge to win over a less brutalist fanbase?
“It’s really just an opportunity for us to shine as ambassadors for the culture. We’re so grateful that we were chosen for that slot. They could’ve picked any hardcore band in the world for that ‘traditionally hardcore’ slot on the line-up, so to be selected is so cool. It might not exactly be our natural habitat, but we’re going to bring what we always do. And as much as I understand the discourse [about Turnstile’s recent sound], I have a different relationship because I’ve known those guys since 2011. They are still a hardcore band. They’ve still got that energy, that spirit. Sonically it has changed a bit, but it’s such a triumph that they’ve been able to take that energy and spirit to the top of the world. It’ll be great to be out with Amyl And The Sniffers, too. Deep down, they’re just a Melbourne punk band, born out of a lot of the same pubs that we are!”
Supporting Malevolence in the UK should be a return to more familiar, ferocious territory...
“It’s gonna be sick. I don’t know what to expect because it’s going to be our first time playing support at shows of that size in that part of the world. The last time we were with Madball! And plenty of people would call that a metal tour, which makes us the odd ones out. But seeing the size that bands like Turnstile or Malevolence are getting to, and the opportunities Speed are afforded, is a sign of audiences’ changing attitudes. People are so much more open-minded than we give them credit for. We’re bombarded every day by division and polarising ideals. It feels like the world is growing further and further apart. But when I see people embracing a band like Speed from a place like Sydney, it feels so good. When I was growing up, it didn’t always feel like that.”
Looking further ahead into 2026, what’s next? Is it time to write album number two?
“As I said, ALL MY ANGELS is a stepping stone. The next album is on the horizon. But there are more shows to play first. 2025 kinda got away from us. We knew that we would tour here and there off the back of ONLY ONE MODE, but we didn’t realise it would be this crazy. For example, we haven’t been to Asia since 2023 despite us being, to a major extent, an Asian band. Also, we do need to take a little down time just to be at home. The last Speed show for this year is December 14 and it will be nice to be in one place for a minute to enjoy the Australian summer. Then it’s back to business. There was a point in time when I didn’t know how long we would be able to do this, but the band has become more and more important to us and the people around us. We’re in it for the long game now. And part of that is taking care of ourselves and remembering to find some down time so that when we are out there, we’re the best version of Speed that we can be!”
ALL MY ANGELS is released on October 23 via Flatspot
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