LA’s No Age are one of the most exciting bands around — for evidence, look no further than their newly released album Nouns. I’m also happy to say they are committed, resolute vegans, and have been so for years — Dean Spunt since he was 15, with Randy Randall jumping on board a few years after that.

As a vegan myself, I often tell people that the move from meat-eating to vegetarian is much easier than the one from vegetarian to vegan. If you’re willing to make a steady diet out of pasta and pizza, no matter where you are, you can pretty much avoid meat. Avoiding pasta, cheese, eggs, and all animal products is another matter. It ain’t easy — especially if you spend much time, oh, say, anywhere between NY’s East Village and Berkeley, CA.

No Age spend much of their time on the road, where dining options often range from McDonald’s to KFC, and somehow manage to stick to a vegan diet all the time. When I spoke to them a few weeks back, they were having none of the bitching about how “difficult” that choice is. Said Dean, “People always ask us, ‘Isn’t it hard to be vegan on the road?’ and we’re always like, ‘No, not at all.’ I mean, sometimes you have to go to a grocery store and buy some fruits and vegetables, but other than that….no.”

As for “cheating” with the occasional bite of cheese, Randy doesn’t stand for it. “I mean, who am I cheating?” he asked. “It’s a choice I made, and it’s something that I enjoy doing and I find value in it.”

It’s the “enjoy doing” part that meat eaters have a huge problem wrapping their heads around. I constantly encounter the assumption that I must be miserable not eating meat, since I am “denying myself” so much gastronomic pleasure. “Right,” Randy agreed, “like you’re depriving yourself of something. And it’s like, ‘No, I’m actually enjoying the best parts of food…’”

And honestly, Dean said, often it’s non-animal consumers who are more adventurous. “When I decided to go vegan, food opened up a whole new world,” he told me. “It was like, Thai food, Ethiopian food, Indian food — I didn’t even know about those things before, you know?”

“The choices in food being vegan are so much more infinite than being a close-minded, suburban meat eater,” Randy chimed in. “Leaving fast food behind and exploring new cultures in food was a lot more interesting.”