SPEED Win Inaugural $80,000 NSW Music Prize

Australian hardcore icons SPEED have won the $80,000 NSW Music Prize, shouting out the local hardcore scenes and communities around Australia in their acceptance speech.

Sydney hardcore legends SPEED have taken out the $80,000AUD NSW Music Prize for their debut studio album, ONLY ONE MODE. The NSW Music Prize is a new annual award by Sound NSW that celebrates the “rich creativity and contribution of NSW artists to the contemporary music sector.”

During SPEED’s acceptance speech as shared on their Instagram story (recorded from Seoul where they’re currently playing and presented during the ceremony last night at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney), vocalist Jem Siow shared the band’s gratitude for the prize:

“We wanna say a massive thank you to everyone at Sound NSW for acknowledging a Sydney hardcore band in such a prestigious way. Respectfully we’ve gotta admit though, for a hardcore band, this music culture of ours has never been a game, it’s never been a competition. An award this massive is pretty foreign to us,” he began.

“We really see ourselves as a product of our friends, family, and all of the kids who have been building the community in Sydney and Australia with their own hands for decades now. Who we are as people, our philosophy as a band, our worldview, our political ideologies, have all been shaped by all of these people.”

Siow continued by shouting out the local hardcore scenes around NSW and Australia as a whole, and said SPEED would be taking some time to reflect and consider how they could pay the prize forward to continue driving the hardcore scene and surrounding communities.

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The award was announced in 2024 by the state government as part of a decade-long plan to support local music, with the main prize to be awarded to a NSW-based artist or act “whose release or body of work has had the most significant impact over the last 12 months.” It forms part of a larger $160,000 prize pool across 3 categories, also including the NSW First Nations Music Prize ($40,000) and NSW Breakthrough Artist of the Year ($40,000). The other two prizes were awarded to Barkaa for Big Tidda and Ninajirachi respectively.