Good Things Festival 2023

3 December 2023 – Brisbane Showgrounds – feature by Lucas Bell – contributions by Cody-James Henderson, Luci Scott & Bec Harbour – pictures by Bec Harbour

God it’s good to have festival season back. Despite the predicted heat, Brisbane showed out for the last day of the Good Things weekend, wrapping up a huge three days for the festival. Lead by what some consider a weird mix of headliners, including Fall Out Boy, Limp Bizkit, and Devo, the rest of the festival was filled out with some impressive international and local talents, like Corey Taylor, Behemoth, I Prevail, Ocean Sleeper, Bloom, and countless other bands who all deserved to be named. I tried to make a festival day where I could capitalise on seeing as many bands as possible with as little downtime between sets. But with only 10 hours in the festival day, I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted.

The Plot in You started the day off for me under the stage 3 and 4 tent, with probably the highest energy set of the day, outside the headliners. As is the standard, festival sets tend to be a best of, and Plot fans surely weren’t disappointed with songs like ‘Divide’, ‘Forgotten’, and set closer ‘Feel Nothing’. Hell of a band live though. Just as good as the records.

It was a hot one today, so I decided to hit the main stage to chill in the seats while Enter Shikari played. I’ve seen Shikari like, half a dozen times, and they never disappoint. We got the classics, like ‘Juggernauts’ and ‘Anaesthetist’, as well as an impassioned speech about how bad the climate change crisis has gotten, before playing ‘Arguing with Thermometers’, with “double the frustration that we had when we wrote it”. I left before the end of the set though, because I was not going to miss Slaughter to Prevail.

And holy hell. Slaughter are incredible live. Words cannot describe just how incredible Alex’s vocals are live. They are terrifying on the recordings, and live, it’s almost like a demon summoned into reality. If you weren’t a Slaughter fan, the seven songs they played would be the songs I would show someone. Viking was huge. ‘Bratva’ and ‘I Killed A Man’ went off. But the crowd went bonkers for ‘Demolisher’. If any bookers are reading this, bring Slaughter back, ASAP.

Make Them Suffer were up next, and while it might have felt like a huge task to follow from Slaughter, MTS absolutely crushed with a perfect mix of old and new songs, with as much crowd participation as could be mustered. Opening on their latest song, ‘Ghost of Me’, we really got the best festival set possible, with songs like ‘Ether’, ‘Fake Your Own Death’, and ‘Contraband’ littered through the nine song set. The crowd loved every second, but when ‘Doomswitch’ hit, the tent exploded.

I quickly used the time after MTS for a feed, before hitting the main stage for the rest of the day. Starting with Corey Taylor, he played a perfect hybrid of Slipknot, Stone Sour, and solo work, with his SpongeBob cover, and set closer, another cover, of ‘Don’t Change’ by INXS, thrown into the mix. I heard this was in his rotation, but damn, it was brilliant live. Corey doesn’t miss a beat live. He’s exactly the same dude whether he is under a mask, or playing in Stone Sour. ‘Song 3’ was a personal highlight of the day for me, as I’ve never seen that live before, and I absolutely adore that song.

Bullet for my Valentine was up next, and to my disappointment a little, we only got one song from the new record, in ‘Knives’. It was a brilliant way to open the set though. I’m not gonna lie though, when ‘Your Betrayal’ kicked in, I lost my mind. There is something special about that song live. Matt Tuck also made a comment before playing ‘Tears Don’t Fall’, where The Poison is about to celebrate 20 years. I’ve never heard a statement like that where my first instinct was to check for gray hairs. Closing out with Tears, and ‘Waking the Demon’ was probably the perfect way to end their set.

I Prevail made their way onto stage to a massive ovation, ‘Rumble’ by Skrillex played them out, before screaming those iconic words “Get on your knees and bow down”. That one lyric lit the fans into a frenzy as the pit blew open. At this point of the day, I was chilling out in the stands near Stage One, but I could see every single pit that opened up. Probably some of the craziest stuff of the day. As they promised at their headline show last year, I Prevail dedicated most of their set to their 2022 record, True Power, with songs like ‘Body Bag’, ‘Self Destruction’, and ‘FWYTYK’ littering the set list. We got some older stuff though, with ‘Come and Get It’ getting a massive reaction, as well as a completely unexpected cover of ‘Chop Suey’ by System of a Down. Singer Eric Vanlerberghe brought up the idea of doing a shot from a shoey, instead of a beer, before someone threw a prosthetic leg up, which Eric drank a beer from anyways. And I gotta say, if I had a nickel for every time I saw a shoey being done from a prosthetic leg in 2023, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Right? The set closed out with ‘Gasoline’, to the delight of the Showgrounds crowd, as I Prevail took their bow.

After one of the heaviest performances I’ve seen all day, Devo took us back to the 80s with an hour of pop music. They busted out all the hits, including ‘Going Under’, ‘Freedom of Choice’, and of course, ‘Whip It’. Devo was a bit of a lower energy show, and putting them between I Prevail and Limp Bizkit made that seem more obvious, but they made the most of their time by straight up having fun on stage. I’ve never been a big fan of Devo, but hearing some songs, it turns out I knew more of their catalogue than I realized. It’s cool though, I can tick Devo off the bucket list (Devo photos to come).

After an overrun from Devo, Limp Bizkit took to the stage to probably the biggest reception of the day. Fred Durst and company strolled out on stage, before blasting into ‘Break Stuff’. After a quick chat with the audience, asking us what we’ve got, we got ‘Show Me What You Got’. They ran the gauntlet of hits, including ‘Hot Dog’, ‘Rollin’, ‘My Way’, and ‘My Generation’. ‘My Generation’ even had Fred pulling a grandma on stage for a hug, before closing the song out. Durst had the audience eating out his palm, as intercut throughout the set were samples of House of Pain, White Stripes, and countless other singalong songs. ‘Take a Look Around’ was a huge fan favourite, as was ‘Nookie’. Bizkit slowed the set down with ‘Re-Arranged’, which is a song I never thought I’d head live, before sending the crowd off with ‘Break Stuff’, again. If the crowd didn’t go nuts the first time, they did to close out the set.

As it hit 8:20pm, Fall Out Boy’s rendition of ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ started to get the crowd hyped, before Fall Out Boy walked out playing ‘Love From the Other Side’. For a band with only 100 minutes of stage time, they absolutely maxed out the set list, with a massive 24 song set. And the set was VERY impressive. Back to back, we got ‘Sugar’, ‘We’re Going Down’, ‘Uma Thurman’, ‘A Little Less Sixteen Candles’, ‘Grand Theft Autumn’, ‘This Ain’t a Scene’, ‘Disloyal Order of Water Buffalos’, ‘Bang the Doldrums’, and ‘Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet’. That run of songs is incredible.

Patrick Stump took to the piano on stage, talking about how he never talks to the crowd because the band always thought it was funny the lead singer wasn’t the front man, before going into a piano medley of ‘What a Catch’, ‘Donnie’, ‘Golden’, and even hitting a ‘Down Under’ by Men at Work cover. After going through one of the newer songs, ‘Baby Annihilation’, they did a cover of ‘Crazy Train’ by Ozzy Osbourne, before bursting into an extended intro for ‘Dance Dance’, which the crowd went ballistic for. The band summoned a magic eight ball on stage to reveal they were playing ‘Young Volcanoes’, which from where I was sitting, didn’t feel like it got the reaction the band was expecting. 

Due to time constraints, Pete Wentz got on the mic to say that they weren’t going to play the encore game, but instead just get into more songs so they could have things wrapped up before curfew, before launching through my own personal favorite run of songs, which included ‘My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark’, ‘Thnks fr th Mmrs’, and ‘Centuries’, which had fireworks and chaos you would expect to be in the close to the show. But it wasn’t! Fall Out Boy actually finished things up with the throwback track, ‘Saturday’, to an massive ovation to send a happy Brisbane audience home.

It’s kind of no secret that last year, my review for Good Things 2022 wasn’t particularly kind. But I feel that a lot of the issues I saw and experienced last year were solved, and I couldn’t be happier about it. The food choices this year as well were a major step up, as well as the shower structure they set up near stage 3, which I spent more of my day there than I would care to admit. Fingers crossed the momentum can continue with even more success next year.