SiM vocalist MAH talks evolution, identity, and international success

In a crimson-red graffiti-tagged room at The Fillmore Silver Spring, we caught up with SiM’s charismatic vocalist, MAH, just before their electrifying headlining show. This gig was part of SiM’s “PLAYDEAD” world tour, promoting their latest studio album of the same name.

MAH, with his long bangs tucked under a baseball cap, defied the rebellious image of SiM’s music through his humble and approachable demeanor. Our conversation delved deep into the essence of SiM, their expanding international presence, and their evolving identity and philosophy as a band. We talked until the walls and ceiling of the basement green room shook, the glasses in the cabinet clinking from the power of Crystal Lake’s opening set.

Join us as we explore the heart of SiM with MAH, uncover the driving force behind their success, and look ahead to their promising future.

Vocalist MAH, center, triumphantly raises his fist before SiM’s iconic bat logo.Matthue Cole

“What I really want is to open people’s eyes to the high caliber of talent in Japan.”
—MAH

Congrats on another major North American tour, and your first-ever North American headlining tour. How has the vibe and preparation changed from performing as a supporting act to as a headliner?

MAH: Hmm, that’s hard [laughs]. Yeah, there haven’t been any major changes—we just keep doing our thing, whenever and wherever. When we toured as a supporting act for DANCE GAVIN DANCE last year, it seemed like 90% of the audience hadn’t heard of SiM, so the conditions were different. This time, as the headliner, most of the audience knows us already. Because of this, we’ve been able to change up the songs in our setlist, and what I say during the emcee sessions.

Do you feel more excited, since it’s a headlining tour?

The “excitement” is at the same level. Performing as support was fun because it was a challenge. It was a pleasure to entertain people who had never heard of SiM before and show them that they could enjoy songs even if they didn’t know them. This time, performing as headliner has given me a warm feeling. I want to show my appreciation to the fans. Both times have been different, but when I think about the meaning of the word “excitement”, both are about the same. Both have been fun.

You said it gives you a warm feeling, and that you feel grateful. Would you say you feel “closer” to your audience this time?

Yeah, I’m smiling more, and showing it in my face [laughs].

Do you feel SiM’s reach and visibility has grown in America, since your last tour in 2023?

Yeah, I think so. We’re doing the VIP meet and greet before the show, and so many people said to me “I saw you on the last tour!”.

So, you’ve had a lot of return customers, both coming back to see the show and upgrading to VIP?

Yeah.

From left to right: SiM’s bassist SiN, vocalist MAH, and guitarist SHOW-HATE.Matthue Cole

That’s great! You also brought along Crystal Lake as support on this tour, who is also a well-known Jrock band. You’re both “loud” bands in the scene, but your styles and musical qualities are quite different. How did you end up collaborating on this tour?

In Japan, there are a lot of bands with a “loud” style—but compared to countries like America and Europe, Japan is a smaller country, so the scene for loud music is much smaller. For example, punk rock, hardcore, metalcore, metal, rapcore, nu-metal, we’re all together. Since the total number [of bands] is so small, even if we’re different genres, we play all shows together.

We’ve been playing shows together with Crystal Lake for about 15 years. Then in 2022, SiM released The Rumbling, and preparations were made to tour Europe and America. At that time the guitarist of Crystal Lake, YD said that he’d like to tour abroad as well. As headliners, we were able to bring three supporting bands with us, and we thought it’d be good if one of the three was Japanese. So I called up YD and said, “Let’s tour America together!”. That’s how it all came to be.

These days “Jrock”, or “Japanese rock” music seems to be gaining international recognition. What do you feel makes Japanese rock unique, and how do you identify with it?

Japan’s entire music scene shares some similar points, for example, the chords used in pop music. The chords and the melodies are different from pop music made in other countries. As a Japanese band, we all grew up listening to that kind of music, so it’s natural to us like it’s in our DNA. The musicality is just naturally different from music made in other places around the world.

Even when friends from other countries hang out with me in Japan—like, you know how they play pop music in Japanese convenience stores? My friends from overseas listen to the music, and ask me “Why did they make a chord change like that?”. To us, we don’t even notice it because it’s just “normal” pop music, but I think it’s different compared to pop music in other countries.

What I’ve noticed is that overseas pop seems to be composed in a loop, repeating melodies and chords. My friends tell me, “The way music is made in Japan is completely different”. So that’s what I think it is. I think since the culture is different, that it just happens naturally.

That’s very true. In Japanese music, the melody and composition are so dynamic. Now, is there a part of your identity as a Japanese person that goes into the music and lyrics you write?

It’s the same kind of situation. For example, in other countries, when something happy happens, other cultures will hug and show affection. Japanese people don’t hug, just shake hands and say “congratulations”. But people in America are quick to hug, or kiss, or something like that. If placed in similar situations, Japanese people will react differently than those from other countries. For example, the words that they choose, their language codes, and the actions they take are completely different. I don’t know why the hell that is [laughs].

SiM’s infectious energy electrifies the crowd on their North American headlining tour.Matthue Cole

SiM has been active for nearly 20 years, making music with a wide appeal. So, why do you think that SiM’s overseas popularity has grown so much in just the past few years? For example, when SiM first appeared in the US at Knotfest in 2016, there wasn’t such a big crowd. Now, the reception has grown so much.

Of course, in 2016 our song The Rumbling hadn’t come out yet. No matter how you look at it, I think The Rumbling helped the recent spike in popularity worldwide.

The Rumbling was a song we made with the anime studio MAPPA, who we’d worked with before. Our first experience working with MAPPA was producing EXiSTENCE for the anime series Rage of Bahamut. After that, we made the song Let It End for Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul, also produced by MAPPA.

At that time, MAPPA realized that SiM’s music was a good fit for anime. Because of that, we had the chance to create The Rumbling for Attack on Titan, and we were given more creative freedom to write the music. It was a step up from writing EXiSTENCE in 2014, and it gave birth to The Rumbling.

Actually, It wasn’t until we started touring internationally that I realized many fans worldwide had been wanting to see SiM ever since EXiSTENCE was released.

All of these small opportunities were like seeds being planted. It all led up to The Rumbling, and when that was released, all those seeds burst into a field of flowers. It may have taken us a while to get here, but I feel like all those seeds we planted before are finally starting to bloom.

SiM has done theme songs for a lot of different franchises—you mentioned Attack on Titan and Rage of Bahamut, and there are many more. But, I think that SiM is so much more than an “anime song band”. There’s so much more to offer. What message or values do you want to convey to overseas listeners, like “This is us—this is SiM”?

Well, on this tour, there’s a part in an emcee session I’ve been saying to the audience. The Rumbling is like a word in a sentence, on a page in a book, in a library. It’s just a small part of “SiM”.

But, if you listen to The Rumbling there are parts that sound reggae. If you listen closely to any of our songs, there’s reggae influence as well. It’s difficult to explain [laughs]. But if I could give you a recent song that I feel represents SiM today, it’s KiSS of DEATH. I think that song represents our essence clearly.

Would you say that’s the essence of “SiM”—that reggae vibe, with a punk edge?

Yeah, I’d agree with that.

I think so too. I think it’s always been present in SiM’s music since your first album, like in the song Paint Sky Blue. Speaking of albums, it’s been about six months since SiM released their latest album, PLAYDEAD. Now that you’ve had time for it to sink in, what do you feel when you look back on PLAYDEAD?

We released the album PLAYDEAD after the singles The Rumbling and Under the Tree. Because of that, there was a lot of pressure that made it difficult. On the other hand, a lot of people even overseas got to know SiM thanks to those songs. So we wanted to create an album that says who we are as a band, even if people only knew those two songs. Looking back, I think we truly made an album that says “This is SiM”. I think we did that really well.

PLAYDEAD has elements of music I listened to as a teenager in the 2000s, like nu-metal and pop punk. On the flip side, teenagers today are discovering that kind of music again through PLAYDEAD. I think it’s a cool cycle, to release this album to this generation.

What makes a “great song”, especially when it comes down to the wire choosing songs for an album?

That’s kind of complicated. When the pandemic hit Japan, our shutdowns and restrictions were extremely drawn out compared to other countries. Even until last Spring, masks were mandatory at concerts, and fans weren’t allowed to scream or sing. All they could do was clap. With PLAYDEAD, we wanted to make an album that could give people support and joy even in those conditions. Our mindset was that once the pandemic was over, things would return to normal. When making PLAYDEAD we chose songs that would excite and inspire the audience.

PLAYDEAD was released alongside multiple unique music videos. Like, almost half the album was released in music videos or lyric videos [laughs]. And just this Monday, SiM suddenly released a music video for BBT on May 13. Why did you decide to release the music video now, almost six months after PLAYDEAD?

[Laughs] I don’t know why we released it now. But, you know how the music video has all of our faces in it? During our European tour in February, we filmed it all in the green room [laughs].

After releasing KiSS of DEATH and HiDE and SEEK, we wanted to put out one more music video. We were stuck between BBT and DO the DANCE. Our management recommended BBT. So we started working on the video, and once it was done, we released it. There wasn’t really a special reason behind the timing [laughs].

Speaking of music videos, our music video for HiDE and SEEK was made completely with artificial intelligence (AI). We saw AI as a new tool that we could try, and we wanted to take on the challenge of trying something no other band had done before. There were some negative comments about it, but we felt it was important to try out this new technology and explore what we could do with it.

BBT is similar to that because we tried to do something new. Usually making a music video takes a ton of time and resources—you have to rent a studio, get all the members together, film the performance—and it’s a lot of work. With BBT we took a different approach, and just took a camera and shot it in the green room. Even when we were all busy, and in the middle of an international tour, we were still able to make something interesting and different.

SiM is the kind of band that loves trying what other bands have never tried before, like taking a challenge with new technology. Last year we even did a virtual reality (VR) concert for The Rumbling. Trying new things is just one part of SiM’s style.

Going back to BBT, and reading the lyrics, it definitely has this punk anthem vibe, like rebelling against authority. Was there any specific inspiration or world event that made you want to write that?

To be honest, I had nothing to say [laughs]. That happens sometimes, when you have nothing to sing, even when the composition and melody are finished. Sometimes the words just don’t come to you, or you don’t have anything in particular you want to say. I was writing and writing, and all I could think was “it’s boring, bloody boring time” [laughs].

Then again, writing lyrics to a song doesn’t just happen in one day, sometimes it takes up to a month, one word, or one line at a time. So maybe as I was writing it, it started to evolve into more of a punk mindset. It’s not like I went into it with the intention of writing a punk anthem or anything. I’m sorry [laughs].

With the success of PLAYDEAD, it’s hard to imagine what great things are coming next. After having nearly completed your world tour, what do you see as the future of SiM?

There are still a lot of countries we haven’t gotten to play in, especially South America. Fans in countries like Chile and Peru have sent us a lot of messages, asking us to perform there for years. There are countries we have yet to tour in Europe, too. Because of this, I’d really like to tour more places and give those fans the chance to experience a SiM show. My goal is to decrease the number of fans who haven’t seen a SiM show as much as possible.

To go one step further, I want to give people a show that only a Japanese band can deliver. In Japan, we have our own music festival called “DEAD POP FESTiVAL”. I think it’d be the best if we could bring that to places like Europe and America. Touring abroad made me realize that the quality and skill level of Japanese bands is really great. What I really want is to open people’s eyes to the high caliber of talent in Japan.

For everyone reading this around the world, and supporting SiM, do you have any parting words?

I’m sure that there are people reading this who are thinking, “I want SiM to perform in my country too”. I’d like for those fans to wait just a little bit longer. I think in the near future, maybe in the next one to two years, we’ll be able to go to most, if not all of those places. So please wait for us. We’re really grateful for all of the support we’ve received. Thank you.

SiM’s MAH engages with a captive audience.Matthue Cole

JROCK NEWS thanks Alise Newman for interpreting this interview, as well as SiM for making this interview possible. Official photos were provided by SiM, shot by Matthue Cole.

This November, SiM kicks off the final leg of their “PLAYDEAD” world tour in the United Kingdom and Europe. Tickets and VIP upgrades are on sale now.

If you missed out on the live gigs this tour, SiM’s livestreamed performance from Irving Plaza in New York is still available to view on demand on Veeps. You can check it out here.