Review: Good Things at Flemington Racecourse

Good Things at Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne
w/ Tool, GWAR, All Time Low, Garbage, Weezer and many more
Friday, December 5, 2025

Flemington was built for spectacle. Even outside the Melbourne Cup calendar, the place carried its own haunted grandeur: showgrounds carnivalesque, big sky overhead, the faint ghost of history underfoot. Good Things dropped into that environment like a travelling city of black tees and muscle memory—patched denim, fishnets, bondage gear, and fifty-year-olds getting to take their Megadeth shirts out for a walk. While this aesthetic might read as ‘alternative black sheep’ in isolation, en masse it became something else entirely: a uniformed nation. And judging by the density around the grounds, a sizeable portion of that nation was there for Tool.

Nostalgia hung heavy, but not passively. It crackled with anticipation.

For Perth punters like us, there was a particular sting—and inevitability—to flying across the breadth of the country to catch bands that once came west as part of a living, breathing festival culture. We were once blessed with big, weird lineups that felt like they belonged to everyone, not just the east-coast corridor. These days, the pilgrimage feels built into the price of admission.

Still, once the wristband was on, the nostalgia trip was immediate. And the day’s best moments came from bands that either refused to let nostalgia sit politely or weaponised it into something urgent.

Refused delivered the day’s first gut-punch. Our beeline to the main stage was part devotion, part logistics—and part afterglow from seeing them the night before in Northcote, a 90-minute set that had felt like being handed the full scripture. The festival version was tighter, abridged, and probably not enough for the truly hardcore. But as a statement, it landed.

A Palestinian flag was draped across the amps in solidarity; the mic was taped in matching colours so every close-up kept politics front and centre. Dennis Lyxzén stepped out in the same purple shirt as the night before—improbably unbothered by sweat or time—metal rings stacked on each finger like an iron fist. They opened with The Shape of Punk to Come and The Refused Party Program: two core tracks from a record once derided for being too deviant, too experimental, and too unwilling to behave like punk was supposed to. That history mattered.

Watching it land in 2025, it didn’t feel like a museum piece. It felt like a reminder that punk’s job isn’t just snarling defiance—it is breaking the form open. In a festival environment where some pop-punk moments felt sterile and politically vacant, Refused’s insistence on disruption was crucial oxygen.

Rather Be Dead dragged the set into sludgier early-record terrain; the whammy bar got a workout accordingly. Lyxzén paused to say that when Refused started a band 30 years ago, being in a band was political—before widening the question: how many people on stage today were talking about imperialism, genocide, or the death of democracy? He didn’t deliver it like a sermon; he delivered it like a measure.

From there, the set became a controlled riot. Liberation Frequency (“we want the airwaves back”) turned into call-and-response before collapsing into a punishing drum breakdown. Summerholidays vs Punkroutine launched at a sprint, and the mic cord became strangulation theatre as Lyxzén lassoed it around his own neck, the crowd clapping in sync as momentum propelled him forward. “We play such violent music,” he laughed at one point, “but I’m quite a happy person.”

Deadly Rhythm earned its name through artillery drumming, the riffs sharpening into Slayer territory (with a Raining Blood tease made for the pit). Lyxzén stepped back like a sly conductor, orchestrating the mosh with a grin that made it clear the band were relishing this farewell run. New Noise closed the set the only way it could: iconic intro, cameras up, circle pit spinning before slowing into the vibey breakdown—then the whole field screaming together on cue: “Can I Scream!?” FREE PALESTINE was burned across the backdrop. If you were going to give people a moment they wanted to document, Refused made sure they documented the politics too.

From there, Good Things splintered into parallel realities. Wargasm arrived with “Angry songs for sad people” emblazoned behind them—a cliché, sure, and their “make some fucking noise” crowd work was a well-worn festival script. But there was bite beneath it: fierce vocal exchanges, unexpected pop sheen, and breakbeat-heavy electro-punk energy that nodded to UK lineage without slipping into cosplay. Loud, messy, alive.

GWAR obliterated subtlety entirely. Cartoonish doomscapes framed a parade of grotesques—Nazis, dinosaurs, priests, Trump caricatures—narrated by the Tyrant King’s garish command to “prepare to have your feeble little minds blown.” Blood sprayed from severed jugulars into the front rows; a baby dinosaur puppet was nurtured, drugged, resurrected, and amalgamated. Trump wrestled a lizard-man before being gutted onstage to the tune of El Presidente; a priest was lambasted as a Mother Fucking Liar. It was video-game logic rendered as splatter theatre—absurd, camp, and totally committed. When the band dedicated Sick of You to the late Oderus Urungus, the sincerity landed beneath the slime, even with a weirdly twee singalong tribute near the end.

Elsewhere, tonal whiplash defined the day. Goldfinger delivered boppy ska-punk nostalgia, introduced by a flatulent trumpet and a DIY backdrop scrawled across what looked like a filthy old sheet—possibly an original relic from 1994? The contrast with their sharply dressed suits was part of the charm. A cross-catalogue set and a string of familiar covers (Just Like Heaven, Linoleum, 99 Balloons… and Santa Claus is Coming to Town) kept things buoyant, while Counting the Days turned heartbreak into a communal chorus.

Back at the main stages, Machine Head leant hard into gravelly melodrama and authoritarian stagecraft. Robb Flynn commanded mass crouch-downs and jump-ups beneath unfurling American-flag visuals, positioning himself as both a persecuted outsider and a revered figurehead. The pit churned relentlessly, replayed on screens for those pushed back. The set ran long, padded with extended pauses and solo noodling as the bassist repeatedly exited the stage between songs. New material from UNATØNED gave the performance currency, but Flynn’s grievance-heavy monologues—particularly on Outsider—read as oddly self-exculpatory. When the band finally pivoted to older material, From This Day and Davidian snapped the crowd back into focus, artillery-grade double-kick drums shifting the energy decisively. Like the Waco siege referenced in their closer, Flynn framed himself as under siege—despite the reverence surrounding him.

All Time Low arrived engineered for ease. After their neighbour’s brute force, their bright stage—primary-coloured plinths, Americana trucker caps, flannels and tees and a painfully diminutive drum kit post-Machine Head—felt too pop-clean. The Baltimore outfit leant into fan service with immaculate harmonies and relentless singalong cues. SUCKERPUNCH, Weightless and Poppin’ Champagne glided by frictionlessly, the female-heavy crowd swelling with familiarity. It was polished, accessible, and curiously weightless—a reminder that not all nostalgia carried the same gravity.

Local heroes Civic cut through the gloss with pub-punk directness. “Do you believe this need for speed?” the frontman asked, gesticulating wildly with a touch of Peter Garrett as the band tore through material from recent album Chrome Dipped. There was no artifice here—just feral guitars and sweat equity. “You could’ve been at the dim sum stand,” they joked, “but you came to see us.” Across the green, Kublai Khan’s sludge hung as thick as the pot smoke in the air.

High Vis delivered another glimpse of what might come next: working-class signifiers worn without apology, hybrid Britpop-punk that doesn’t sit neatly inside a hardcore blueprint, and duelling guitars getting angular. Their set spanned their three records: Walking Wires is rendered with less abrasion than Altitude, a propulsive firestarter of a track. Talk for hours, earning laughs and recognition, telling a punishing tale of a guy who snorts too much coke and chews your ear off. Between songs, their angry Scouse frontman spoke openly about mental health in a way that felt lived-in, not aestheticised—cutting through the festival banter with something unvarnished and real.

Garbage’s iconic sound carried across the grounds before the stage even came into view, Shirley Manson presiding with madam-esque authority—glamour and menace intact. But the set curdled around an onstage dressing-down of a male punter, an intervention that felt wildly disproportionate in context. Beachballs had ricocheted across Good Things all day, yet this lone interaction was elevated into a moral offence worthy of public humiliation and threats of crew enforcement. Framed through a “because I’m a lady” restraint, the moment exposed the asymmetry of power a stage affords—the same authority Refused had wielded earlier—while reminding us that not every use of that power reads as radical. Reheating the rhetoric of violence and intimidation is not feminism, particularly when aimed at a punter whose great crime was touching a beachball. Fittingly or ironically, I’m Only Happy When It Rains closed the bracket.

Weezer, by contrast, offered the gentlest comedown of the festival: Rivers Cuomo’s hip-dad college-rock energy anchored by a sticker-covered guitar worn like a well-travelled suitcase. Perth audiences hadn’t seen them since pre-COVID—their last visit struggling to sell—but Melbourne told a different story, with a broad crowd singing along and not just the devoted. Cuomo began the set detached, barely making eye contact, before warming a few songs in as hit followed hit—understandable, perhaps, given the daylight-saving sun beaming straight onto the stage.

Hashpipe landed in instant glee, its live sound noticeably softer than the recording, while Melbourne-specific banter (a shout-out to Cherry Bar) recalibrated The Sweater Song. Island in the Sun made full use of the stage, molten-sun graphics and orange flares glaring back at the punters as the crowd bounced through its infectious “hip hip”. A Celebrity Skin cover proved unexpectedly perfect—whether thanks to Cuomo’s slightly femme tone or simply a better pitch than the original—before sliding into Beverly Hills, rendered less obnoxious by the Hole juxtaposition. Later, El Scorcho and Pork and Beans leant hard into nostalgia, while deeper cut Jamie surfaced as a genuine treat.

Say It Ain’t So seemed a perfect closer, its chorus swallowed entirely by the crowd as Cuomo stepped back—until a fake exit flipped the script, launching a meme-worthy Buddy Holly. The band regrouped arm-in-arm to thank the audience, warmth undeniable. It was a sweet, gentle landing—perhaps too gentle, given Tool still loomed.

By the time Tool arrived, the festival machine was already grinding on, with stage crews dismantling elsewhere. A smutty Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch about a horse race of body parts played—disarming, dated, and oddly on-theme for Flemington. Stinkfist bludgeoned the field, while screens favoured macabre dystopian visuals over band shots or interpreters. Banter (“almost as good as Adelaide”) landed patronising rather than playful. The set, shorter than their standalone Perth show, leant heavily on 10,000 Days and Fear Inoculum, rarely straying from the Tool template and barely distinguishable from memories of seeing them headline Big Day Out in my youth. The miles of punters who stayed to the end seemed content enough—though the Dancing Queen outro played less like a wink to the crowd than a private joke.

The Good Things experience is ultimately not about cohesion. Like a multi-festival braided together, powered by the icons of youth and the flickering of what comes next, the old guard and the new upstarts. For Perth punters, the distance was real—but so was the reminder that nostalgia didn’t have to calcify. At its best, it still argued, disrupted, and made room for something new.

CAT LANDRO

Photos by August Hilverts