INTRODUCING: SiM

SIM have been a band since 2004. However, outside of their native Japan, the band only found international fame thanks to the popular anime, Attack On Titan. Lead singer MAH explains how the band’s song The Rumbling, was featured on the hit anime show.

“The collaboration was made possible thanks to our record company, Pony Canyon, and the anime production company, Mappa. The Rumbling is the result of having the director Yuichiro Hayashi listen to several demo songs and combining his favourite phrases into a single song!”

The band are rounded out by SHOW-HATE on guitar, SIN on bass, and GODRi on drums. On their new album, PLAYDEAD, there is an orchestral version of the song that is the cherry on top. The album cover is from one of the band’s live shows, and has a poignant meaning. “Japan is the one country that suffered the lasting effects of the Coronavirus pandemic for the longest in the world,” MAH explains. He goes on to elaborate, “the national characteristic of being diligent was a major factor, and we were more cautious than any other country in the way we returned to the former way of life. It was only in April 2023 that the sight of face masks disappeared from live venues and the culture of moshing and crowd surfing returned.” He states that that album cover was a call to everyone to start living again.

This sentiment also inspired the title for the album, which is about how “we live our lives by suppressing our feelings in society, and if we get used to that, we may not be able to express our true feelings, or we may think that it’s easier to stay in our shells. Therefore, we’re playing dead.”

SIM played their first UK show at Download Festival 2023. Whilst the festival might have gained a reputation for muddy due to the constant rain. However, when the band arrived at the festival, MAH says that “it was so hot I thought I was going to melt. When I got there, it was sunny the whole time, like a desert! The show was great. There were a few empty spaces at first, but by the end of the show, the crowd started to gather. It was also a great opportunity to become brothers with the crazy Indian monster band BLOODYWOOD!”

The good news is that the hot weather haven’t put SIM off coming back to the UK in the future. “I’m really looking forward to the UK tour in February in support of NOTHING MORE and can’t wait for the headlining UK tour that will happen in the near future!”

In fact, their international fame influenced the making of PLAYDEAD. “There were naturally many changes from the past albums, which were based solely on the premise of ‘playing in front of a Japanese audience’, and this album, which is based on the premise of ‘playing in front of audiences in various countries around the world’. It was very challenging, but as a songwriter, I had a lot of fun making it because that’s where I get to show off my skills,” MAH explains.

The band’s name stands for Silence Iz Mine, and is inspired by reggae music. “The most important thing in playing reggae is to understand and manipulate ‘rest’, which is a musical term for absence of a note. The moment when no sound is played, in other words, the silence, is what matters. That’s how we came up with the name of the band. But it was hard for the Japanese audience to remember the name, so we took the first letters of each word and called ourselves SIM. I thought it was a good idea because there was no such thing as a SIM card back then,” MAH laughs.

The band are known for mixing reggae, punk, rap and metal together. On paper, the genres shouldn’t work together. However, SIM make it look easy. MAH explains why the band chose those genres. “The local area where we grew up, Shonan, is what’s known as a surfing Mecca in Japan. So naturally, reggae and surf music were a part of the culture and is very popular. When I was an adolescent, I started going to local live music clubs, and I would see older local bands playing reggae music, and they all had huge tattoos,” he laughs. “But when we spoke to them, a lot of them were saying, ‘I used to play hardcore punk when I was younger, but now I’ve settled down and play reggae.’ So, if that was the case, why not play both reggae and punk while we’re still young! That’s how the band SIM was born. That was around 2004, and there were many great rap and nu-metal bands around the world at the time, so we were naturally influenced by them and mixed it in what we did.

“As for why we chose to embrace the 2000s era of nu-metal, that was the era we chose to start the band. Nowadays, hip hop is dominating the music industry, and the rock scene is going downhill. But the fact that the metal ballad The Rumbling, which was released amid such times, was loved by not only rock fans but by many people, means that even in 2023, there’s still plenty of room for a heavy metal sound like that to be popular. So, I thought, ‘Why not revive the nu-metal of the early 2000s that I love so much? Nu-metal in SIM style.’”

PLAYDEAD is out now via UNFD.

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