Rise Against Sydney Review @ Hordern Pavilion

Rise Against, Pagan and Bare Bones: the sonorous sound reverberating through the expansive space of Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion (13 February) was a decadent plunge into raw, thumpy, crowd-pleasing punk and metal.

The night was instigated with some ritualistic chaos mongering with Melbourne’s Pagan; potency and swag, uplifting downbeat deathrock.


Currently working on their debut studio album, the band has been in the process of amassing a cultish following after winning triple j Unearthed’s UNIFY gathering comp, touring with Clowns and a shamanic on-stage set at Wollongong’s Yours & Owls Festival.

Click here for more photos from the show.

Sydney five-piece Bare Bones have held their own on the main stage of Soundwave 2015 alongside Slipknot and Marilyn Manson.

They have graced stages playing with the likes of Black Label Society, Northlane, Every Time I Die and Cancer Bats and hailing from Sydney, were demonstrably stoked to be playing a home-town show. Rolling Stone championed the band’s 2017 debut album 'Bad Habits' as a 'hit record of the genre', it was numbered among the Top 20 albums of the year by Killyourstereo.


It was a conclusively executed lesson in getting everyone in the crowd fist bumping, never more so than during 'Midnight Climax'. “This is a drinking song so put your f$%#ing beers in the air.”

The post-punk four-piece Rise Against clearly needed no introduction: playing seven shows as part of their biggest ever headline tour in Australia, it was a celebration of the release of their deeply felt, politically-loaded, chart-topping eighth studio album 'Wolves'.


The gig was peopled with old-school hardcore fans: beery, lairy, enthused, singing along.


Rise Against's live set, as with their recorded albums, perpetuates an ideology of progressivism and resistance, as singer Tim McIlrath roared hoarse into the expansive crowd: “Of the things that you are trying to overcome.”

The gig was reminiscent of an earlier time: locally, musically and culturally (i.e. when Sydney used to be fun). It was a potent reminder of the power of punk and metal to propel collective action and resistance against oppression. Before lockout laws and smoking laws and banishments and closure and exile.


Rise Against Sydney. You used to be cool.