Let us just start by saying that Nephalim Clothing is one of our favorite clothing companies ever. Both the owners, Tony and Rob, are passionate vegans who promote animal rights on the Nephalim Web site and take our literature and “Meet Your Meat” to shows when they sell their gear. But this time they’ve really outdone themselves. Not only have they created a limited-edition Nephalim/peta2 T-shirt to help support animals, but they also took some time out to chat with us about being vegan and why they wanted to create a “Meat Is Murder” shirt with peta2.

Why did you decide to go vegan?
Well, to start, we were vegetarian for two years. We went vegan because it just seemed like a natural progression. I’m gonna quote a great band (Propagandhi) here to help explain it: “I’ve recognized one form of oppression, now I recognize the rest.” Not to bad-mouth vegetarians here, because it’s an amazing step to take, but we made the switch to veganism because when you’re vegetarian, you are well aware of the hell that animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses go through, and to turn a blind eye to one or the other, to us, was just not acceptable. Plus, it’s not even difficult. Advertisements and the food industry today have programmed society to believe that there’s no easy way to be vegan. People are programmed to the point where they will be disgusted at the thought of eating a soy meat substitute but have no problem with eating a bloody piece of flesh that once belonged to a living being. It’s just so twisted.

Why is it important to you as a clothing company to not only make high-quality, cruelty-free clothes but also to actively educate your customers about animal issues?
I’m going to state the obvious here: People wear clothes every day. Something that happens every day is bound to have an impact on the way that people think and see the world. We are striving to make sure that the youth of today don’t just stand by idly while the world watches FOX News and is spoon-fed a right-winged agenda. We need to get pissed about everything wrong in our society and stand up against it, one T-shirt at a time. Although not even close to everybody who wears Nephalim is vegetarian, let alone vegan (we still love all of you by the way), we believe that a vegan lifestyle is the easiest way to “stick it to the man,” because it’s a revolution on your own plate.

Nephalim recently decided to team up with peta2 to create limited-edition animal rights shirts. Why is this a project you wanted to pursue?
Every time we set up a booth at a show or anything like that we’re always handing out PETA fliers and playing the “Meet Your Meat” DVD over and over on this little TV we have, just trying to get the word out to as many people as possible in that one show. PETA, in our opinion, is the reason that the veg movement has come as far as it has. The organization makes information and assistance abundantly available for those who are curious and thinking about going veg. Furthermore, most of the crowd who would be into Nephalim come out of various music and art scenes, and peta2 has taken the veg lifestyle and started catering to the youth, especially with its associations with some of the best music of today (Sage Francis, Dead Prez, Rise Against, and Dillinger Escape Plan, just to name a few). Nephalim and peta2 are meant to work together, and I hope this isn’t the last time.

Oh, how we agree! Now show your support for all things cool and AR by picking up your very own peta2/Nephalim T-shirt today.