Is Australia Scoring A New Rock Festival?
Rock and post-punk icons are set to return to Australia for the first time in years.
Alice Cooper @ Fire Fight Australia (Credit: Jared Leibowitz)
All signs point to Australia being on the receiving end of a brand-new music festival set to bring rock and post-punk icons to our shores this April.
Pandemonium Rocks, teased by prominent Australian concert promoter Andrew McManus (One World Entertainment), is scheduled to land in Melbourne, Sydney, Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast.
According to teaser posts about the acts appearing at the festival – with lyrics and music – shared on McManus’ Instagram account, Pandemonium Rocks has scored Deep Purple (with hints including Perfect Strangers and Highway Star), Alice Cooper (No More Mr Nice Guy), Blondie (Call Me, The Tide Is High), Gang Of Four (Damaged Goods), Dead Kennedys (Holiday In Cambodia), The Psychedelic Furs (Love My Way), Placebo (Every You Every Me) and Wheatus (Teenage Dirtbag).
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The question is, will the line-up for Pandemonium Rocks grow even bigger? And when can we see the official line-up announcement and buy tickets? Oz Concert News, an Australian music X account (formerly Twitter), has posted that the line-up will land on Wednesday, 17 January.
The Music has reached out for comment about the festival.
Pandemonium Rocks lineup announcement. January 17th.
— Oz Concert News (@OzConcert) December 30, 2023
If all the acts teased for Pandemonium Rocks do indeed make it to Australia, the new festival will mark Deep Purple’s first performance on Australian shores in eleven years, Blondie’s first gigs Down Under since 2017, the first time in five years for Gang Of Four, Wheatus’ first shows in Australia in twelve years, and Placebo’s first concerts Down Under in seven years. Alice Cooper last performed in Australia in February 2020.
In a review of Alice Cooper’s concert at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena in 2020, The Music’s Joe Dolan described the rock icon as a “bona fide legend”. Dolan wrote, “After half a decade in the game, Cooper hasn’t lost a single atom of that ferocious rock star capability for which he has become known.
“The 72-year-old is as spry and chaotic as the snake-wielding youngster that terrified conservative parents back in the ’70s. He’s a kitschy haunted house actor in the body of a bona fide legend, and that’s exactly how lit should be.”
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