As Speed vocalist Jem Siow said on stage at the sold-out Elsewhere Hall last night (9/24), this was Speed’s fourth time playing NYC this year alone, after opening for Knocked Loose twice and Have Heart once, but it was their first-ever headlining show here and that made a triumphant difference. Even when they provided direct support at the Have Heart show, they nearly stole the show, but playing to a sold-out crowd that was entirely there for them made it even more of a madhouse.
Jem told us in the new issue of the BrooklynVegan digital magazine that he felt “the hype surrounding Speed really superseded the substance,” adding, “we literally achieved 1000 times more than we ever expected or desired off a demo and an EP, which literally made no sense to us, especially within the perspective of an Australian hardcore band,” and they aimed to change that with their debut LP Only One Mode. As evidenced by the shows they’ve been playing since the LP came out, the album is full of crowd-pleasers. Outside of “Not That Nice” from 2022’s Gang Called Speed LP, all the big shoutalong, pile-on moments came during the LP songs, and Jem’s flute breakdown in “The First Test” never gets old no matter how many times you see him do it. Other embellishments to the live show like the turntable scratches, the airhorns, the big Windows 98-looking Speed logo spinning on the screen, and members trading off lead vocals adds to the whole spectacle of it all.
Speed may be “not that nice,” but the other magnetic thing about their live show is that their tough-guy image is offset by how earnestly excited the band is to be there. Both times I’ve seen them this year, Jem expressed a mix of gratitude, bewilderment, and excitement about being in the hardcore “mecca” (his word) of NYC and all the support they’ve been getting all around the world. Along with being hard as fuck when they’re playing, the pure joy and passion they elicit is genuinely contagious.
Making the show even more exciting was direct support from Angel Du$t, who headlined the same venue last December. Speed have been very vocal about how big of an influence Angel Du$t vocalist Justice Tripp’s other band Trapped Under Ice are on them, and Jem praised Angel Du$t on stage last night, asking the crowd, “What other band sounds like Angel Du$t? Speed is just a hardcore band, plenty of other bands sound like us, but I can’t think of another band that sounds like Angel Du$t.” Justice seemed just as happy to be there, and he said it was a dream bill to have Angel Du$t sandwiched between Speed and Big Boy, two of his favorite hardcore bands around.
To Jem’s point, there really is no band like Angel Du$t and that was abundantly clear throughout their set. They had a slightly different lineup than usual–Justice on vocals, Steve Marino and Jim Carroll (American Nightmare, The Hope Conspiracy, The Suicide File, etc) on guitars, Zechariah Ghosttribe on bass, and Nick Lewis (of Webbed Wing) on drums–and they delivered a career-spanning set that pulled from hardcore, jangle pop, classic rock, psychedelia, and more in a way that I’ve never seen another band do. And even when they play the overtly non-hardcore songs, the mosh never stops.
The show began with Big Boy and LIHC locals Hangman, who had the place full and moshing from the start. We didn’t manage to get pics of those bands but more pics of Speed and Angel Du$t by Dimitry Mak continue below.
Speed and Angel Du$t do it again at NYC’s Le Poisson Rouge tonight (9/25) with Firewalker, Nothin’ But Enemies, and Heads Will Roll. The Chisel were supposed to play this one but they had to cancel their whole US tour at the last minute and Angel Du$t were added in their place. Angel Du$t also play Long Island’s Amityville Music Hall on November 11, and Big Boy have more Northeast shows in November.
