Speed is one of the most exciting bands in hardcore. If you’ve ever been to one of their shows, or seen pictures or videos of their shows, you’ll know that they have an energy unlike any other band in the space right now. If you haven’t seen any of that, but you’ve heard of them, then you’ll be asking yourself how they work a flute into a hardcore song. If you are hearing about them for the first time in this article, you’ll be excited to know that they share a love of anime just like you probably do. The incredible musicians you’re listening to are just the tip of the iceberg, and the “gang called Speed” stretches far beyond the stage and the tracks. Speed is so much more than just a band. It’s a community, an ethos, a family. Not unlike the anime community. I spoke with bassist Aaron Siow (who does so much more than just bass) about keeping up with anime as one of the busiest bands in hardcore, how he views his relationship with his brother with a Fullmetal Alchemist lens, and the “style” overlap between music and anime. You’ve been traveling and touring the world, and it feels like it hasn’t been that long since you released ONLY ONE MODE . You haven't really stopped! Have you had any time to watch anime? Aaron Siow : Funny enough. I've just only started watching anime again, and it's been kind of whilst touring. I used to watch so much anime when I was a kid growing up and getting into it, more or less the time when we started the band. This year we are away for seven months out of the year. We're just off the ground in Australia. So being on tour so much being in vans and in planes, I've gotten back into consuming different types of content, whether it be gaming or watching shows or anime as well. I've got my Crunchyroll and my Shonen Jump subscription on my phone. So I've been trying to keep up to date with some. It's really only One Piece manga wise. It's funny. Last year we were on tour in Dallas with Knocked Loose, and I know Nicko and the Knocked Loose guys and some of the guys from Loathe all went to the office. I was so jealous. But he did bring back some codes for us and I’ve been watching nonstop since then. In that time I watched JUJUTSU KAISEN , which is the new one for me. I watched Demon Slayer:Kimetsu no Yaiba . I've watched the first three episodes of Chainsaw Man . So I’m trying to catch up on a few things. RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Life of Agony's Alan Robert Announces New Releases, Talks Anime Inspiration Very fitting with that dark, violent vibe overall that goes with hardcore. Siow : Very true! And on the Knocked Loose and Loathe tours, seeing them taking all the pics got me very jealous. Kane from our band, our drummer. He's actually a really big anime guy as well. His Instagram handle is @kane.of.sixpaths right now. So he's a lot more expressive of a weeb than I am. But yeah, he also is maybe a little less eloquent than I am haha. That's why I'm here. Was anime something that music helped you get further into music when you were growing up, or were they separate interests? Siow : It's funny you say that, I haven't really thought about it too much. But you know what, it's very interesting that you said that because I haven't really been into heavy music for my whole life, really it's only really been in maybe the last decade or eight years or so. Growing up, I was listening to a lot of hip hop and I was into rap and break dancing when I was younger, with a lot of my Filipino friends. So it's just very deep into that side, but at the same time, watching a lot of anime. My brother was getting into a lot of metalcore and heavy stuff like Trivium and Avenged Sevenfold, and Killswitch Engage. This is back in like maybe 2008 or something like that. I was still in year eight or something like that very early high school. I wasn't as into heavy music yet like I said. But one thing that kind of got me into a lot of the heavy music was AMVs. I used to watch Naruto and Sasuke fighting to Papa Roach Trivium or Linkin Park or what have you. Man, the amount of Linkin Park AMVs that I watched, and at that time I got really, really, really into Linkin Park and I guess even just them having like the whole Gundam aesthetic within their videos. Yeah, I never really thought about it in that way, but now I realize how much I've always really wanted to have a Speed song as an anime intro one day, or honestly, if anyone out there makes AMVs and wants to make some dope AMVs to some Speed songs, please send them to me. I'll reshare them. It would work so well! A lot of those fights are exactly like what you want to see in the pit. Siow : Straight up, man. I don't know if you've ever been to a hardcore show in Asia, Japan or Bangkok, specifically, but they look like anime. The maneuvers that they're doing out there are fun. RELATED: Marty Friedman on Playing the Nyaight of the Living Cat Theme Song I imagine it almost looks like that Nike ad you did. That looked like an AMV but for a dope slice-of-life show. Siow : That was a really fun video. We just got all of our homies from like Sydney and a few from Melbourne just to come up and film a little show, I guess. We got all of our ninja moshers in there. It does kind of seem like anime, and specifically the scene in Australia, maybe more toward the metalcore side or the djent side, seem kind of intertwined. I'm wondering if you've seen that a lot in the scene as you've been coming up? Siow : To be honest, not as much in the hardcore side of things. I guess there are a few people who are into it. Not really as intertwined into the scene. I know what you're talking about in terms of metalcore and stuff like that, having a bit more intertwined into even just their own aesthetic. But I feel like hardcore was like a pretty niche kind of thing, and just by virtue of that, people in the scene, kind of like how they discovered the music, they also get into a lot of other things. Like anime is one of those. I have a bunch of friends in America and here as well, who are really really deep into that anime and I don't know if you know Gag or Odd Man Out from Seattle, my friends, Jeff and Casey from those bands there. They're hella into anime. I always see Casey wearing anime t-shirts and stuff. What were your formative anime experiences? Siow: Like I was saying before when I was younger, honestly, it was probably the Big 3, like your One Piece , Naruto and Bleach . I watched those from when I was a kid up until Naruto finished and got up to BORUTO: NARUTO NEXT GENERATIONS , and then I've not watched that since. Bleach I watched literally up ‘til the end, and I know that they've just been putting out the Thousand Year Blood War which I've watched as well. One Piece … man even in those years when I wasn't really into anime, I maybe had five or six years when I wasn't really watching much, I was always reading the One Piece manga. At this point I feel obligated to see it through to the end. I’ve spent so much time already. But yeah, I watched a lot of those anime on TV at home. There wasn't actually, in Australia, at least in like free to air TV, there were clips of anime available every now and again. I think we had Cartoon Network and it wouldn't really have a lot of anime on regularly. It would show Dragon Ball Z , and Pokémon , and those more starter anime. But at night they would have Adult Swim, and from there I think two of my favorite anime growing up were Samurai Champloo and Fullmetal Alchemist . It wasn't even Brotherhood at the time. It was literally just the original, the first run of the just straight up series. Neon Genesis Evangelion was on there as well I think, but I only watched a handful of episodes because it was on at like 10pm which was super late for me at that age. I'd be watching and trying to watch it a couple of times, and you know, just following on. But yeah, I think those younger years. Samurai Champloo and Fullmetal Alchemist still, to this day, are two of my favorite series. They’re stylistically so sick, both of them. The art style is dope. Both also have really compelling stories. Fullmetal Alchemist was dope because I do a lot of shit with my brother. My brother's the singer of the band. We've always been like best friends, and I kind of look at that. It's a brother story. It's cool. RELATED: Sleep Theory's Cullen Moore: Here's How Anime Shaped Me Fullmetal Alchemist and Samurai Champloo are not just great stories, but they have great music as well. Do you think anything from those series has stuck in your mind somewhere and is coming out now that you’re in a band? Siow : Musically, Samurai Champloo has the sickest soundtrack of any anime, and especially with how it mixes in stylistically. Rest in Peace Nujabes. For Fullmetal Alchemist , speaking on AMVs again, I remember seeing this fest that just got announced in Korea. I looked at the headliners of the festival and it was Touché Amoré and ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION. I was like, I know this name, and I realized it's because they did the song “Rewrite,” and it's one of the last intro songs for Fullmetal Alchemist . That was like one of my favorite songs growing up because I was obsessed with just that intro, and I used to honestly, not even listen to the full song. I would just watch the intro of that every time, and, like I know in like all the apps and stuff you can skip through the intros these days. But that was one intro, I would just never skip. It’s hard to find a better representation of heavy music and anime going together quite like Touché Amoré and ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION being on the same bill. Why do you think they go so well together? Siow : I feel like it's different for different kinds of music, you know, with metal and like metalcore kind of stuff. That scene is a lot more, for lack of better words, theatrical, then say hardcore, which is very meat and bones, and just breakdowns and chugging raw vocals. In the metalcore performances there's a lot of yeah, I guess again, theatrics, you know what I mean? I feel like a lot of those dudes are doing this crazy spinning the guitars around them, doing crazy things like kicks and flips. I have these friends from Japan actually, in a band called Paledusk. And they're like doing the most insane performances every single time. And like, I don't know. I guess this is, and it's not meant to be a racial thing. They're a Japanese band, but I feel like with that aesthetic, especially now with them getting involved in doing more music for anime like Gachiakuta . I feel like with hardcore, it works in not necessarily the style of anime, but more of just the passionate niche aspect of it. The people in anime and hardcore like to go for a deep dive. They get into something they learn about the lore about it. They learn about the writers or the animators of it. They learn to create a world. I feel with anime, this is just like music. There's so many different genres of music, so many different genres of anime. There's a lot of searching that you do with anime and with manga and stuff. That is just something very innate for a hardcore kid too. They like to go to vintage stores and record stores and look for these niche things, or find these niche storylines. A lot of people pull a lot of anime references for different things, for whether it be merch or even style, and know that there's not that many cartoons or other formats which really delve so deeply into different styles, like there's a lot of Gothic anime that will have a full Gothic styling. Even looking at the Fullmetal Alchemist logo, and how they've done things like the graphics with the metal and chrome on that, like pulling stuff from that for different ideas and designs, I feel like that's something that a lot of hardcore people would be doing. It's just finding references. It totally makes sense. There is a style that goes with both. There's anime “style” and hardcore “style.” Siow : My brother, he writes everything for Speed. He's the singer, he's the flute player, the screamer. He was always into anime with me, but not nearly as deep. He would watch some Bleach with me when I was watching sometimes, but he never got into One Piece or Naruto , or he watched a little bit of Samurai Champloo with me. But some of the other stuff didn't quite fully get into. Even so, I feel like there's almost like a lot of parallels with a lot of the subject matter of Speed, which is very positive for hardcore. Overcoming a lot of adversity. That is something that 90 percent of anime is about. It's about a character that doesn't quite fit in trying to find their place in the world trying to make their mark and to do it with their own ethics. I know that that isn't necessarily why my brother's done a lot of the stuff that he's written, but that is definitely a parallel that I can see within there, and like something that I think, whether you're into anime or not, a lot of people get behind that type of story and get behind that sentiment. Just trying to place your own mark in the world and do it with your own ethics and morals, and in a way that is true to yourself. RELATED: The World Through the EYES of "Spinner" Both have such a strong sense of community as well. Anime fans will gather together and go to conventions or talk about the latest episodes. In hardcore, you’ll always see the same people at shows. Everyone's always trying to elevate everyone, and I mean especially in the “gang called Speed.” You always talk about it as your family, and it's everyone, not just the people that are actually playing the music. It's everyone that comes along. And I think that's just something special that ties into your point. You have to really make an effort to get into it in a way. Siow : Straight up straight up. Yeah, in regard to Speed, especially being a touring musician these days, it really feels like a traveling circus. Or I feel like I'm in my own little pirate crew sailing the Grand Line. Every tour is a new arc! What is on your watchlist for these upcoming arcs you’re going on? Siow : So I watched the first few episodes of Chainsaw Man . I was into it. One Punch Man is another one that a lot of my friends told me to watch. That and Attack on Titan . I don't know if this is going to be controversial, or if some people are gonna get angry at me for saying this, but I haven't been able to get into Attack on Titan yet. Everyone tells me, like all of my friends, whenever I'm like, I just need any anime to watch, they're like, you just need to watch it if you haven't watched it yet. But I've tried to watch it three different times, and that first episode is just… I think I’ve just never been in the right headspace for it. I recently watched Delicious in Dungeon . It's a super easy going anime, very chill and kind of funny. I watch a lot of like, cooking videos on YouTube, anyway, so it felt similar. If there was any anime character that you could add to Speed, who would it be and what would they do in the band? Siow : We are a big foodie band. We really like our food. I feel like coming from Australia as well. I don't know if a lot of people are aware of this for Australia, but Australia has an incredible food scene. We've got really good Asian food here. You can get all these different, whatever niche kind of Asian food you want. So off the back of that I probably have to add Sanji to the docket. He's probably gonna cause a bit of trouble on the tour, you know, running off to pick up girls and stuff like that, or trying to. But I feel like the food makes up for it. Yeah. That'll be my pick. I'm just trying to eat, you know. Listen to Speed now . Catch Speed on tour in Australia, then UK/Europe, then North America . Follow Speed and Siow .
