SPEED

Have you ever seen an Australian hardcore band that plays the flute?  I have.

There is nothing like listening to some hardcore music to get you out of a bad mood.  The pure aggression of the guitars and pissed off vocals always will brighten my day from all the crap we here almost daily in the news now.  Tonight I am going to The Pearl in Vancouver to get a full slate of new and upcoming hardcore bands who are local bands Poisoned Seeds and Punitive Damage, along with Whispers from Thailand, and headliner Speed from Australia.

Before Speed hit the stage, all 3 support bands, particularly Whispers got this crowd moving as there was lots of moshing, slamming, and tonnes of Stage Diving.  Most venues have banned stage diving at their venues but The Pearl stage is ripe for this type of entertainment as there is no barrier between the crowd and the band.   Also, the other form of “dancing” was prevalent, which is crowd killing when a scatterbrain does karate kicks and flailing arms with full fisted  into the crowd that is watching the band.   I witnessed a few near fights and potential injuries in that pit before Speed even took the stage.   These buffoon’s make it very difficult to be remotely close to the band or enjoy the show for that matter, within the small confines of The Pearl.

The band is made up of 5 members with Jem Siow (vocals), Dennis Vichidvongsa (guitar),  Joshua Clayton (guitar), Aaron Siow (bass) and Kane Vardon (drums).   They have broken out on the scene quite quickly as they formed in 2019, with a great first album called Only One Mode which was released in 2024.   That album recently won an ARIA (Juno or Grammy equivalent in Australia) music award from Best Hard Rock or Heavy Metal album.

Speed took to the stage around 920pm tonight, starting with “Not That Nice from their Gang Called Speed EP.    The enthusiastic crowd continues to be the main show with the stage antics as Jem whips them up into a frenzy.   He is actually a really good frontman that does well reaching his audience is quite animated while he sings.   The band is quite solid as well, guitars sounded good and heavy while the back end held everything in good time.

“Kill Cap” at song 3, we saw Jem encourage the stage divers and they did not disappoint as they were coming hard and fast flying into the pit.   Might be the reason why he lost microphone coverage for the first third of the song, then grabbed his backup, which was dead, then he recovered by taking another mic off the stand.

Midway through the set, which I believe was during “Big Bite”, Jem got blindsided squarely from behind, and taken out into the pit by a stage diver.    He was a good sport about it though, as he got back on stage and smiled about it.   He seemed genuinely happy to be in Vancouver and appreciated all the support from the Vancouver hardcore fans.

Last 2-3 songs of the night were appropriately “Shut it Down” and later with “Only Foes” along with “First Test” mixed in.   What is extremely interesting is their big song “First Test” where at the tail end of it Jem pulls a flute out and does a few blows in it during the break down portion of the song.   This is a unique piece that I think really brought some attention to this band and needless to say, sounded like the album too.

All these bands played hard tonight, Speed of course were the eye of the tiger as the headliner but if I had one negative point about it, it would be that they only had a 11 song set.  In some circles, say Opeth, that would be a great show but for the most part, Speed’s songs only go 2 to 3 minutes long at most.   So we are looking at about a 40 minute show at most, which ended pretty early.   I think they could’ve added at least another 5 songs as coming all the way from Australia for 40 minutes seems a little underwhelming.  Hell, play all they have!  We would’ve loved to hear it all!   But, in saying all that, it was great seeing them and tour mates Whispers too, hopefully next time they can exhaust the mosh pit with another new album in the future.