Lamb Of God ProfileEarly rumours had Lamb of God and Trivium slated to play Good Things 2026. What Australian fans got was even better. A face-melting, bone-rattling co-headline tour featuring two of the most iconic metal bands of the last 20 years, backed by a killer support act, Bleed from Within.
For both headliners, this tour carried plenty of weight. Lamb of God last played Australia in 2024 for Knotfest Australia and its accompanying sideshows, but hadn’t mounted a full Australian assault in over a decade. Meanwhile, Trivium last touched down in 2023 for the inaugural Knotfest Australia before also heading out on a couple of sideshows.
After making their Australian debut last October, Glasgow metalcore band Bleed from Within were back on support duty. And boy, did they rise to the occasion. Their unique Scottish blend of epic melodic death metal, sinister soundscapes and groovy riffage has cemented them as one of the UK’s most renowned and intriguing metal bands.
They tore through eight songs, all mined from the last three records, including the blistering shredfest The End of All We Know and the equally potent Levitate, with fans screaming the chorus back to the band as Scott Kennedy’s commanding voice rang through the arena.
Complete with a wall of death, Pathfinder was absolute pandemonium, proving why Ali Richardson (also of SYLOSIS) is one of metal's most punishing drummers. I Am Damnation emerged as a hulking slab of sound, as though the Kraken had been summoned from the depths, backed by Davie Provan's thunderous bass.
Elsewhere, God Complex was a merciless juggernaut, with Steven ‘Snev’ Jones trading riffs with Harrison Mills of Pain Body, who stepped in for Craig ‘Goonzi’ Gowans following a family emergency. The set closed with the cinematic In Place of Your Halo, its stirring bagpipes evoking a battle-ready spirit, priming you to charge headfirst into the Highlands.
The carnage continued as Trivium took the stage. Formed in Florida in 1999, Trivium rose from the early-2000s metalcore explosion before steadily expanding their sound beyond the genre's boundaries with their own blend of thrash metal. Last night, that fusion landed with tremendous effect as crushing riffs and breakdowns collided with soaring melodies and anthemic choruses, giving their set a distinctly expansive edge.
Over the speakers, the instrumental The End of Everything signalled the band's arrival before Rain and Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr sent the room into overdrive. The latter remains one of Trivium's most enduring anthems, sounding every bit as savage live, with singer Matt Heafy switching effortlessly between clean choruses and guttural screams, all with a healthy dose of Gene Simmons tongue wagging.
Strife followed with an instantly catchy pulse, driven by the deep, rumbling bass of Paolo Gregoletto. In its wake came The Sin and the Sentence, a six-minute opus of technical riffing with Alex Rüdinger’s ballistic drumming at its centre. The soaring chorus offered only a fleeting reprieve before the song came crashing back down, each shift hitting harder than the last.
Down From the Sky kept the pressure on, with Corey Beaulieu’s white-knuckled riffs slicing through the song with thrash-fuelled precision. The mood shifted with the foreboding Until the World Goes Cold, before the epic The Heart from Your Hate produced one of the biggest reactions of the night as the crowd roared every word back to Heafy, their voices rising above the heaviness.
The set drew from almost every corner of Trivium's catalogue, with deep cuts such as Fugue (A Revelation) and Vengeance Falls getting their moment in the spotlight. The band also treated fans to a taste of their upcoming eleventh studio album with the newly released Dead Inside of Me.
By the time In Waves arrived, the room needed no prompting. The opening riff hit and a deafening “IN WAVES!” erupted from the crowd before the band served a positively gargantuan closer.
The last song normally means curtains. Not tonight. A monster was still waiting in the wings, and the mayhem was only beginning. Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Lamb of God emerged as a defining force of the new wave of American heavy metal movement that reshaped the genre in the 2000s. Blending thrash, death and groove metal, they have also earned a place among the so-called “Big Four” of 2000s metal.
As the banner dropped, Lamb of God exploded into Ruin, laying waste to the stage with a colossal wall of thrash metal. The frenzied tangle of guitars, courtesy of Mark Morton, Willie Adler and John Campbell, was enough to give anyone whiplash.
The unrelenting Laid to Rest, with its ferocious groove, locked the room into a collective headbang, before Now You’ve Got Something to Die For whipped fans into a rabid frenzy. The monolithic Resurrection Man soon followed with its lurching sound and one of metal's greatest vocal punctuation marks: “BLEGH!” Roared back by a sea of voices.
Descending into a more melodic passage, Walk with Me in Hell offered a rare moment of breathing room amid the barrage before Parasocial Christ came along to violently repossess it.
Omerta took a darker, more deliberate turn, followed by Memento Mori, with drummer Art Cruz unleashing a percussive avalanche behind the kit as Randy Blyth snarled his way through. The effect was a jackhammer to the head.
Then came Sepsis with simmering menace, setting the stage for the swaggering Redneck, closing the show with an infectious sonic onslaught. Blyth worked the crowd one final time as the guitars shredded with everything in their arsenal, wiping the floor with the notion that the night was winding down quietly.
On paper, Lamb of God and Trivium might share little beyond their status as metal mainstays and their remarkably legible logos. Onstage, however, the contrast proved to be the tour's greatest strength.
Trivium brought the melody and technical fireworks, and Lamb of God answered with sheer force. Without ever losing momentum, the pairing showcased just how broad modern metal can be, leaving the crowd thoroughly battered by the end of the night.
Someone pass the throat lozenges.
