Underground News
Good Things 2019 Review
Event: Good Things Festival
Location: Flemington Race Course, Melbourne
Date: Friday December 6th, 2019
Photographer: Allison Byrnes (Bad Religion Band Photos – Nicole Noy)
Reviewers: Nicole Noy, Jase L Herbert and Ned Tepper
The hype and anticipation surrounding the second annual Good Things Festival in Melbourne was something hard to put into words. Being passionate music tragics we couldn’t wait to get back out amongst fellow festival goers and enjoy some fantastic live music in a very diverse line-up. This year’s festival was something else though and led up to all expectations and even though I missed the Veronicas, the much anticipated Wall of Death did indeed take place and they did a fantastic version of Blink 182’s “I Miss You” which I could hear from a distance.
We’ll do our festival write up a little different this year with three different reviewers putting their takes on the most memorable day out of 2019. First up our metal head and newly converted Ice Nine Kills fan “Jase L Herbert” will give his takes on I9K and Trivium!
Ice Nine Kills
For the second year in a row, the music faithful flocked to Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, as the Good Things festival kicked off its second run, and just like last year every fan went home satisfied.
Our day started off with a revisit of Ice Nine Kills, who after slaying the stage at Stay Gold the previous night brought their horror themed performance to a hungry audience who eagerly ate up the fright fest.
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Kicking off with The American Nightmare the opening track to their 2018 hit “The Silver Scream”, the audience was consumed by the dead lights and rocked out to a killer series of horror hits. A big part of the Ice Nine Kills set is the costumes worn onstage ranging from Georgie, Billy the puppet from Saw, and even vocalist Spencer Charnas makes several changes from Freddy, to Ghostface and ending in a creepy clown costume for “IT is the end”. Ice Nine Kills were a killer way to begin our experience!
Trivium
Up next were the legendry Orlando natives Trivium, who had a tough ask after The Veronicas and their wall of death, but met the challenge and went above and beyond. Trivium’s hour long set kicked off with The Sin and the Sentence from their latest album of the same name, which was released in 2017. Vocalist Matt Heafy whipped the crowd into a frenzy as Trivium continued a blistering set list that covered their 20-year career. Other classic tracks included Down from The Sky, Beyond Oblivion, The Heart from your Hate, and In Waves resulted in the crowd on hand exhausted but thrilled to have witnessed such a magical performance.
Bad Religion
I was pretty hyped to see punk rock legends Bad Religion return to our shores for Good Things, after a seven-year hiatus, playing the last leg of their Age of Unreason tour. With a career spanning four decades and 17 studio albums, these guys have stood the test of time and their message feels even more relevant in today’s world than ever. The crowd of fans spanning multiple generations in the mosh was a testament to Bad Religion’s timelessness too.
Bad Religion kicked off their set with ‘21st Century (Digital Boy)’, radiating an energy that immediately had the crowd heaving. This was followed by ‘Fuck You’, bringing the fist-pumping from the mosh to a whole new level. It was hard to believe these guys have been playing punk rock gigs since before I was born (and I was one of the older fans in the mosh!).
An hour was never going to be long enough to cover off all their classics, but they definitely gave us some of their best with the rest of the set including a wide-range from the past four decades, including ‘Generator’, ‘Sorrow’, ‘Infected’, ‘F**k Armageddon… This Is Hell’, ‘You’ and ‘American Jesus’. There was something more intimate about this show compared to last time I caught Bad Religion, perhaps due to the daytime billing. There was no lighting separating the band from the crowd and with a simple black backdrop it was purely about the music, the interactions and the powerful, timeless messages behind the lyrics of Bad Religion’s songs.
Simple Creatures
I was between a rock and a hard place when it came to choosing between our very own Parkway Drive and the newly formed Trash Pop duo “Simple Creatures” (Consisting of Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus and All Time Lows Alex Gaskarth). I decided to go with the latter as Blink are one of my all-time favourite bands and I was very impressed with All Time Lows performance at last year’s Good Things Festival.
Whatever “Trash Pop” is, I like it! Simply put “Simple Creatures” are a fun band and the banter between Mark and Alex very much reminded me of the good old days of Mark and Tom DeLonge poking fun at each other performing as part of Blink 182. From jokes about Koalas having chlamydia to Mark calling out Alex on stuffing up the songs it really made for a fun time!
One of the two even joking that his side of the crowd were “Old School fans, they’ve been down since October”!!! Of course Simple Creatures are a very new group, releasing their latest EP “Everything Opposite” only a couple of months ago on October 11th.
The sun went down under the trees at the Flemington Race course, the sunglasses came off of Mark and Alex but the music continued as they bashed out hits One Little Lie, The Wolf, Special, Drug and the ever fun “Thanks I Hate It”. I’m very much excited to see what the future holds for Simple Creatures, bring on some new music. This “Old School” fan would like to say “Thanks, I LOVED it” in regards to Simple Creatures wrapping up festivities on Stage Three!
Our metal guy Jase has been sleeping on Parkway Drive, “Has” being the Keyword now. Check out his thoughts on the amazing Australian headline act!
Parkway Drive
Our Good Things experience concluded with headliner and Byron Bay Natives Parkway Drive. Having heard very little of the band, I was excited to see what was in store, I was definitely not prepared for the madness that was about to be unleashed…
As the intro tape and video rolled a trio of hooded torch carrying Druids led the band onto the stage before kicking off a blistering 90-minute set with Wishing Wells, taken from Parkway’s latest album “Reverence”.
Parkway Drive left an exhausted crowd satisfied after a blistering set of classic and new tracks, incredible Pyrotechnics, and sensational revolving Drum Solo.
This was the perfect way to conclude what had been an amazing day of live music, and we cannot wait to see what Good Things 2020 will have in store.
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