Dune Rats launched while the room was still filling, people navigating around spills of drinks and avoiding stepping on each other’s feet. They didn’t make any kind of entrance, just their instruments and sound that caused everyone’s talking to basically stop dead in its tracks. Some songs were a little off, and a few of their newer ones dragged, but nobody cared. The pits formed sporadically, people laughing as they collided with each other, their heads banging, phones raised high in the air, others just staring at the ceiling as if they couldn’t believe they were right in the middle of this and that they were really happening. The room was already fuller and more energetic, as if the crowd was ready for the next act, sure to be even better than before: Yungblud.
There is one type of noise you hear in a room just before something tips over. This was the atmosphere in Melbourne on January 13, full and buzzing well before Yungblud hit the stage. There was no crowd assembling for a playlist. This was a crowd of 12,000 people, all there to do the exact same thing: let it all out. When Dom Harrison finally appeared on stage, there was no build-up, no grand entrance for him either. He just went for broke. All-out sprint. No warming up. The sound in the room was immediately turned up from loud to deafening, as if everyone had been holding their collective breath all day. From there, the show didn’t let up, and quite frankly, didn’t need to.
Dom does not come across as trying to impress you. He comes across as trying to make it through the night, just like you. He screamed, he paced, he thrashed himself around the stage as if it was too small for the things he was trying to hold inside his chest. His voice cracked several times, only adding to the impact of the words. Dom was right in the middle of the night, between songs, with his shirt soaked with sweat under the bright lights, just looking out over all of us.
It was like the pause before a breath was taken. He started speaking, not off a card, not prepared, just speaking. He talked about Iran, how he had been thinking of the women out there fighting for a cause, how for days, some of them had been without light, without internet, without power, how the fight that they were fighting wasn’t just for them, but for something much, much larger. “We have to be their f**cking light right now,” and you could see the spark around the lawn, around the bowl, as people leaned forward, wanting to hear exactly what he was saying. That moment wasn’t about the songs, wasn’t about the night, wasn’t about us, but something much, much bigger.
Then, the moment of the night: he paused the momentum slightly to slow things down for “Changes,” presenting it as an ode to Ozzy. It’s hard to tell whether this was something he had planned to do or whether he felt the urge to do so in the heat of the moment, but the impact was palpable, as if the collective energy in the room had collectively let out a breath.
The lights were turned down slightly, and the audience leaned in, phones held high in some areas, others simply transfixed. His voice shook a little here and there, and he laughed at himself right in the middle of it, as if he was surprised to be standing up there, trying to do what he was doing. The audience was right along with him, singing along and nailing a few of the notes a little bit, others a little off, and a few of them hardly forming a sound at all. But it didn’t matter a jot. It was as if you could feel every one of them trying to keep it all together.
As the opening chords of “Zombie” spilled through the room, the mood changed again, this time more heavy, nearly electric. Around me, chants built, some shouting out the words, others screaming, some barely above a whisper, but I found myself shouting along, one of my favourite songs of his, a song that heals me. parts of the songs sung entirely by the crowd, and what a bloody sight that was to see and hear.
