Good Things 2025
Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne, VIC
Friday, December 5th
Now in its sixth iteration, Good Things has grown into Australia’s biggest alternative music festival by perfecting a delicate balancing act: tapping nostalgia without becoming a refuge for the retreads.
Good Things was born in 2018 as an heir to Soundwave’s throne, but it’s evolved into something even sharper. It’s a haven for metalheads and elder emos, with enough happening to coax in the older alternative rock fans.
Even the train ride hinted at the day ahead: technicolour hair, battered band tees, and tattoo sleeves. A slow-moving stream of rock fans hoping to avoid sunburn and find salvation. Even with the last-minute losses of The All-American Rejects and Knocked Loose, both due to personal emergencies, there was a palpable buzz on the commute and early whispers about challenging schedule clashes that punters were painfully navigating.
New York bimbocore provocateur Scene Queen jolted the main stages to life early, strutting out in a sparkly two-piece and throwing down a captivating early set that called out everyone from Donald Trump to scummy predators in the punk scene.
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Over on a smaller stage, 15-year-old Newcastle prodigy Maple’s Pet Dinosaur was one of the day’s revelations. Granted an exception to bypass the festival’s 16+ rule, Maple immediately justified the paperwork. Viral hit “Lego” may be her calling card, but her set ran deep with songs that could reach the same heights. Unreleased cut “Pink Blood” was a striking highlight, a nu-metal number that feels remarkably fresh, powered by a strong voice that’ll be taking over airwaves any day now.
Pop-punk stalwarts New Found Glory whipped the mid-afternoon crowd into an early singalong frenzy with “All Downhill from Here”. They played like a unit that’s been doing this for decades, holding tight even without foundational guitarist Chad Gilbert, currently undergoing cancer treatment. His absence was capably covered by Cartel’s Will Pugh and Four Year Strong’s Dan O’Connor.
One stage over, Swedish hardcore icons Refused delivered their final-ever Melbourne show in a cathartic farewell. Dennis Lyxzén, in a lace purple shirt, black slacks and glossy loafers, was a force of nature: lassoing the mic cable, shimmying across the stage, and preaching against fascism and for Palestine. ‘New Noise’ still detonates like a bomb. Deep cut “Everlasting” from 1994 carried new gravitas: Lyxzén’s youthful yelping on the studio recordings gave way to a steely resolve.
Sydney’s Stand Atlantic, drafted late after The All-American Rejects withdrew, made a convincing argument that they should’ve been booked from day one. Bonnie Fraser’s magnetic rapport with the crowd kept the pit engaged, and their cover of “Gives You Hell” was a classy nod to the band they replaced.
After an 11-year absence, interplanetary heavy-metal mutants GWAR returned to Australia with a gore-soaked vengeance. Now fronted by Mike Bishop (aka Blöthar the Berserker) following the passing of Dave Brockie, the group’s theatrics remain as gleefully grotesque as ever: monsters twerking, showers of “blood” covering the audience, a carnivorous dinosaur puppet. And what good would a GWAR show be without a puppet decapitation? Last time around, they wheeled out an effigy of then-PM Tony Abbott. This year, Donald Trump had the ignominy of being slaughtered to the tune of “El Presidente”.
Nearby, Melbourne emcee-turned-punk MUDRAT channelled a different kind of violence. On “YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT POOR PEOPLE” and “YEAR OF THE RAT”, MUDRAT throws himself around the stage. He’s a tornado, and the sizable crowd beneath him follows suit, opening the pit over and over. Fresh from an Australian Music Prize nomination, MUDRAT continues to be one of the country’s most outspoken and electrifying political performers. His punked-up triple j BARS freestyle takedown of the ABC hit even harder on home turf.
One of the day’s cruellest clashes was Machine Head vs. Goldfinger. The former are technical thrash wizards, and the latter is ska royalty. In the end, it was too hard to resist hearing Machine Head’s bandleader Robb Flynn howl through the iconic refrain of “Davidian”. Even down guitarist Reece Scruggs, at home to care for his ailing father, Machine Head sounded massive. Flynn works the crowd like a drill sergeant, extracting every last drop of energy, as the band blasts through a wide-ranging setlist. The energy never lets up, but perhaps peaks with an excellent rendition of “Outsider”, a song Flynn tells the crowd was written while touring Australia.
@goodthingsfestival 🦄 And we’re off! GOOD THINGS MELBOURNE is officially underway 🧜♀️ #melbourne #alttok #goodthings #goodthingsfestival #goodthingsfestival2025
♬ original sound – Good Things Festival – Good Things Festival
All Time Low, dressed monochromatically against a colourful stage, opened with recent single “SUCKERPUNCH”. Switching between nostalgic favourites like 2009’s “Lost in Stereo” and a decent dose of newer, softer material left the set discordant and failing to launch. Still, predictably, closer “Dear Maria, Count Me In” scored one of the loudest reactions of the day, with the Flemington crowd singing back every syllable.
Garbage’s long-awaited return to Melbourne was stripped-back and stylish. Butch Vig, Steve Marker, and Duke Erikson wore all black, while Shirley Manson — draped in a keffiyeh and ribbons in Palestinian colours — commanded every square metre of the stage. She slinked through “I Think I’m Paranoid”, twirled through “Vow”, and delivered a heartfelt tribute to Australian music pioneer Michael Gudinski before “Cherry Lips”.
But Manson’s set was twice derailed by beach ball-related grievances. First she implored fans to puncture a solitary ball bouncing around the crowd. Later, after a miniature soccer ball rolled across the stage, she unleashed a volley of insults at an audience member: “fucking fuckface,” “small man with a small dick,” and bayed for someone to punch him in the face. It was jarring — not set-sinking, but it went on long enough to mute what could’ve been a euphoric crescendo. “Only Happy When It Rains” still soared, even with a pointed lyrical tweak aimed his way.
Weezer shuffled onto stage as perhaps the world’s most unassuming rockstars. Frontman Rivers Cuomo has a scruffy grey beard growing in and might have only packed a few flannels for this entire Australasian run, but once the hits started none of it mattered. Joined by rock’s busiest drummer Josh Freese in place of Pat Wilson, Weezer opened their set with a muscular rendition of “My Name Is Jonas”.
From there, the Californian slackers settled into their set. Some slower tracks — “Surf Wax America”, “The Good Life”, “Perfect Situation” — got the moshpit antsy, before it was all just the calm before the storm. Cuomo, who started the set looking down and only half-catching the microphone, straightened up and ripped into the irresistible chug of “Hash Pipe”.
From there, Weezer ran through a parade of hits. The crowd nailed every part of “Undone – The Sweater Song”, and “Island in the Sun” was the perfect way to bask in the last ebbs of golden hour. A cover of Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” kept the energy high, before they stuck the landing with “Beverly Hills”. They made some cute nods to Melbourne across the set, tweaking lyrics across the set to shout out AC/DC and Cherry Bar.
The closing stretch was the strongest one-two punch of the entire festival. Victoria Asher of Cobra Starship appeared to sing Rachel Haden’s part in “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams”, before skipping off as the band detonated “Say It Ain’t So” — a moment where you could feel metalheads, emos, punks and rock snobs all meeting in the same chorus. They faked a goodbye, dashed back to the instruments, and closed on “Buddy Holly”, sending the crowd into a warm and giddy high.
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Off the after-glow of Weezer, Tool‘s headlining set felt like stepping into a completely different dimension. It was darker, stranger, heavier, and so improbably massive that its very existence as a festival closer felt surreal. You could feel it in the turnover: a jitter of anticipation, a hush folding over a clustering moshpit as faux horse-race commentary blared overhead, narrating a chaotic photo finish between runners named ‘Prick’ and ‘Vagina’.
Then the stage detonated into “Stinkfist”.
Performing in the last gasp of sunlight, Maynard James Keenan emerged at the back of the stage in a leather motorcycle jacket, black face paint, spiked red-and-black mohawk. Maynard rarely occupied the front of the stage; he prowled instead, coiled like something between a serpent and a drill sergeant, darting forward only to retreat back into the shadows. Tool’s visual language reinforced this: the LED screens never showed the band, instead flooding the stadium with pulsating psychedelic artwork and cosmic abstractions.
Danny Carey was the gravitational centre of the performance. His illuminated kit helped spotlight him, but his performance alone would’ve done the job. Every polyrhythmic fill and metric shift felt seismic. Adam Jones and Justin Chancellor, positioned like sentries on opposite ends of the stage, played with the stoic precision of ritual officiants, occasionally drifting inward to meet before peeling away again.
During “Rosetta Stoned”, Maynard squatted low, hands grazing the stage. During “Fear Inoculum”, the song swelled and simmered in slow motion. And somewhere around its halfway mark, the extraordinary reality settled in: a deeply complex, mathy prog-metal band — one with no choruses, few hooks, and zero concessions — had drawn a crowd stretching back to the food trucks. A band like this should not be a bankable festival headliner — they also should not outsell Taylor Swift. Tool exists to break established rules.
As the sun finally slipped away, Maynard seemed to dissolve into silhouette. The less visible he became, the more commanding he felt. Deep-cut devotees were blessed: “H.”, resurrected on this tour after a 23-year absence; “Crawl Away”, not performed since 1998 until this run; and a thunderous “Vicarious”. Fans hoping for the canonical big hits may have left wanting, but Tool wouldn’t be Tool if they showed up and played the hits.
More information about Good Things 2025 can be found here.
