Two cracking shows and one enormous surprise from the Killers

But even after that extraordinary opening salvo, culminating with the often Elvis-channelling Flowers tagging All These Things That I’ve Done with a glorious blast of Presley’s Burning Love, the second half of the album sounds fantastic, too. Flowers punctuates the run-through with stories from the band’s early days, and it is adorable.

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By now, it’s a total love-in – Sablay and Blanton join in for this exuberant celebration of Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll, as the song puts it, as do the touring line-up’s three powerhouse female backing singers – but a leaner, post-Fuss extended encore of hits is still a little flawed.

As with the previous night, This Is Your Life presumably gets on the set list because there’s a great bit you can wave your hands to, and, much as we love Runaways, few of us know all the words, so please stop handing over that first verse to us, Brandon.

But still, if in a couple of years, in this way, the Killers give the 20th-anniversary treatment to the Sam’s Town album (third track: When You Were Young, almighty on both nights of this tour), you’d be a fool to miss it.

Good Things Festival
Centennial Park, December 7
★★★
Reviewed by PENRY BUCKLEY

In the middle of defiance anthem Clown, halfway through their headline set, Korn freeze. Drummer Ray Luzier appears large on the screen, drumstick suspended in midair. The audience’s anguish builds to a roar, before frontman Jonathan Davis playfully admonishes them as if they are the song’s antagonist (“Now, shut the f— up!“) and the nu metal pioneers restart the single from their now-30-year-old debut album.

The performance is a perfect metaphor for a day of stops and starts, of setbacks and silver linings. It begins with a thunderstorm that means attendees at the alternative and metal festival are advised to delay arrival, and follows news earlier in the week that second-billed Sum 41 have cancelled their Australian tour (frontman Deryck Whibley has been diagnosed with pneumonia).

In the eye of the storm, Korn’s 80-minute set is untouchable, full of dark energy, from the distorted fairground guitar on Dead Bodies Everywhere to the bone-rattling bass on Ball Tongue. Davis’ bagpipe intro to Shoots and Ladders nods to metal’s ancient origins, and the whole audience thrills in raising middle fingers for record-company diss track and set closer Y’All Want a Single.

Korn are not the only ones celebrating an anniversary. Folk-punk heroes Violent Femmes play their self-titled debut album from start to finish in honour of the 40th anniversary of their first Australian tour.

Thousands sing along with vocalist Gordan Gano to the appropriate Blister in the Sun (after the rain clears, it’s a scorcher) and groove to the brushed drums on Add It Up and Gone Daddy Gone, while a rich brass section on Confessions provides some relief in a festival line-up heavy on thrash. Bassist Brian Ritchie thanks the headline stage’s Auslan interpreters before making “one more announcement”, launching into Dance, Motherf—er, Dance!

There are some inevitable problems with set times. Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, whose solo slot on the second stage starts 20 minutes before Korn, loses much of his audience. While Korn play to tens of thousands, Corgan plays a gentle, intimate set of old hits, as well as a delicate acoustic cover of INXS’ Don’t Change, to just a few hundred.

But the festival is really about its fans’ diverse interests. As the band tees reveal, people are here to see Atlanta heavy metal band Mastodon, Melbourne punks the Living End, riot grrrl forerunners L7, or alternative rapper Grandson. Still, few discerning scene-heads can resist the pull of Jet’s 2003 Hottest 100 winner Are You Gonna Be My Girl, for which singer Nic Cester embraces his McCartney-esque metal scream.

In this sense, Good Things lives up to the festival ideal of creating a perfect society for its attendees. Nowhere is this clearer than on alternative stage 666, which hosts a talent show and air-guitar competition, and where festival-goers sing karaoke versions of System of a Down’s Chop Suey and Evanescence’s Bring Me to Life, backed by a full band. In a crowd of 30,000 metalheads and misfits, no one is left out.