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Live review: Good Things Festival at Sydney Showground on Saturday, December 6 2025
By BRIAN GIFFIN
GOOD Things has been a part of the Australian summer music landscape for quite some time now. This year brought a change to Sydney’s event with a move to the Showground, a more purpose-appropriate venue that comes with benefits like built-in seating and bars, rather more shelter and arguably better transport.
Sydney was baking under nearly 40 degrees by the mid-afternoon when I finally arrive, but the extreme heat was having apparently zero effect on Virginia-by-way-of-Antarctican monster metallers GWAR. Blood and other bodily fluids spray over the first few rows as Blöthar the Berserker and his Scumdogs of the Universe play a short but thoroughly entertaining set that’s part performance art, part cartoon violence and plenty of catchy heavy metal. None but the dedicated few can probably name a single song but GWAR are so much fun, it doesn’t matter.
Machine Head was among a tranche of acts at the festival who came up against medical and family emergencies, a weird confluence of similar circumstances that caused some last minute reshuffles.
Unlike the rest of those bands, Machine Head decided to play on in an unfamiliar three piece variant. It was something I looked forward to with some trepidation, and from the back of the stadium the sound was awful. Dull thuds of distant drums and faint guitars are unrecognisable as “Imperium” and “Ten Ton Hammer”.
Closer to the front and everything takes shape better. Robb Flynn handles all the guitar parts pretty well, in between constant exhortations to the crowd, stirring circle pits and walls of death and hurling cups of beer into the mob. Some guy is actually riding the inflatable shark in the pit and one of the Red Bull aerobatics planes buzzes the stadium, streamers and confetti and huge inflatable MH dice rain down on the crowd. Flynn looks like he’s having the most fun I’ve ever seen him have on a stage and the vibe is so good we can probably overlook them playing “Is There Anybody Out There?”.
More dedicated fans may have missed the likes of “Halo” and “Aesthetics of Hate” but it was good to hear “Davidian” once again and given my waning interest in Machine Head over recent years I enjoyed them much more than I really thought I would.
The 666 Stage isn’t something I generally check out but this year it’s right outside the main arena. Taking a breather from the heat there, I discover that I missed seeing a watermelon eating contest! Instead, there’s now an Ozzy tribute thing about to start, featuring a live karaoke band and various singers.
To be honest, I thought this would be terribly lame – but it wasn’t! And best of all, there were probably a couple of hundred punters gathered around totally getting into it. The band were spot on and the vocalists nailed the parts in all the right ways, so it was a cool way to recover from the wilting heat.
By now, however, it was actually beginning to cool down and as All Time Low were wrapping up, the promise of a bit of rain loomed over the arena.
It was always a given that beach balls would be making an appearance during Garbage’s set in the wake of Shirley Manson’s bizarre outburst the day before. The questions of how many there’d be and when they’d appear were both answered very quickly: a dozen at least, and as soon as the band hit the stage.
Whatever she was feeling as the inflatables danced around the arena, she opted to stick to the music, letting her t-shirt and the huge fan with “C.U.N.T.” written across it make other statements on her behalf.
I have not seen Garbage live since the 1996 edition of Brisbane’s much-lamented Livid Festival where they were positively luminous. The same could be said again today, 29 years later, especially with regards to Nicole Fiorentino’s sparkly dress. With Steve Marker’s rock moves, the surging keys and electronic droning, Butch Vig’s steady beats and Manson’s affected, stately presence, Garbage delivered the hits.
“I Think I’m Paranoid” and “Vow” came early, Manson declared her band’s deep love for our country ahead of “#1 Crush” and as people started genuinely dancing across the field the heavens finally opened. Garbage switched out the final two songs of the set so they could play “Only Happy When it Rains” during the afternoon’s almost-perfectly timed downpour moment.
The crowd may not have forgiven nor forgotten Manson’s strange takedown of the day before, but it was clear there was still plenty of love around and Garbage once again showed that garbage they are not.
If Good Things is all about hits, then Weezer is the perfect band to have on the bill.
Once again the Showground arena was overtaken with an urge to dance as the band led the crowd on an extended journey through their catalogue. Early albums featured heavily, a non-stop parade of catchy tunes that kept the audience singing and moving constantly. If “Hash Pipe” got a roar of approval then “Undone” got a bigger one. If “Island in the Sun” was huge, “El Scorcho” was bigger still. An unabashed cover of “Celebrity Skin” was a delight, dropped into the middle of the set, Victoria from Cobra Starship joined them to belt out “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams” and a thoroughly enjoyable set was brought to a close with “Buddy Holly” again proving to be one of America’s finest power pop songs.
Showing their usual uncanny balance between geek and LA cool, Weezer’s set was just about as perfect as a live performance could be.
If Weezer was the light, Tool is the darkness. If Good Things, as we said, is about hits, then Tool is the antithesis of that. And yet they prove themselves to be their own paradox by opening their set with one of their best known songs. “Stinkfist” lurches across the arena, the mid-section mosh groove causing mass pogoing across the field. Flooded with lurid visuals, the line between screen and stage becomes blurred. Maynard lurks in the shadows behind Adam Jones as “Rosetta Stoned” slowly unfurls; those with limited attention span can duck out to watch a bit of Make Them Suffer and come back to find the almost as long “Fear Inocolum” now rumbling out.
Performance-wise, the visuals and lights do it all. Maynard’s hypnotic moves are lost in the dark, Justin Chancellor swings with the groove now and then. But the songs are mesmerising. Fierce, intricate, Stygian. Hearing “H.” again is glorious. It has been almost as long for me seeing Tool live as for Garbage, and there was a long period when I hardly listened to them at all. But sometimes we may need to break things off for a while to appreciate what we had, and tonight I became a Tool fan again.
Darkness and light, power and pop, metal and theatre, Good Things combined them all once again. Even the heat couldn’t bring it down.
Main image: Brendan Delavere
