New Bloom Fest 2025 Feat. Basement, Balance and Composure, DRAIN, One Step Closer, Sweet Pill & Glitterer

Bringing the golden age of DIY hardcore shows and all things alternative into a modern setting, in 2025 Australia will play home once again to the freshest up-and-coming artists in the scene with the return of NEW BLOOM FEST, a curated touring festival showcasing all things alt rock, post-hardcore, grunge, punk, and everything in between.

Following its hugely successful inaugural year in 2024, including a sold out Melbourne event, NEW BLOOM FEST is back with a sweltering round two for 2025 in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, headlined by British brooding rock heroes BASEMENT, and joined by hypnotic American icons BALANCE AND COMPOSURE, California hardcore punks DRAIN, melodic indie heavy hitters ONE STEP CLOSER and the debut Australian performances for innovative emo mavericks SWEET PILL, and Washington post-hardcore bohemians GLITTERER. 

With NEW BLOOM FEST once again set to flaunt the incredible next generation of stars in the scene under one roof. Stay tuned for a second announcement where they’ll reveal a bunch of Australian artists that will join the festivities for each respective city.

With a seamless symmetry between 90s emo and grunge, channeled through a contemporary lens, Suffolk five-piece BASEMENT have journeyed through four studio albums, multiple periods of hiatus, headlining Outbreak Fest 2024 upon their return, a recent appearance at the iconic When We Were Young Festival + selling out the iconic Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles (3,000 tickets) within minutes of going on-sale and cultivating millions of streams, views and worldwide fans since forming back in 2009. Evolving from serpentine pop punk leanings on their debut album, 2011’s I Wish I Could Stay Here, BASEMENT have gone on to knit beauty and brooding into honest, raw lyricism, big-room guitar soundscapes, and narcotic melodics, witnessed most ardently on their breakout singles including Covet, generating over 140 million streams of Spotify alone and counting, as well as Are You The One, Whole, Pine and Oversized.

Pennsylvania rockers BALANCE AND COMPOSURE are most likely one of your favourite band’s favourite band; a unique Venn diagram between the sprawling rawness of Citizen, the urgency of Senses Fail, and the grittiness of Fiddlehead. Effortlessly blending the calm and chaos of a thunderstorm in their ever-emboldened trademark sound, BALANCE AND COMPOSURE most recently released their fourth studio album, with you in spirit, following a four year hiatus, teaming up with industry legend Will Yip producing and co-writing, with Yip also declaring the band to be “one of the most important bands to my career, my life, my production development”. Over the years, BALANCE AND COMPOSURE have toured alongside Thrice, Circa Survive and Taking Back Sunday while cultivating a cult-like legion of fans.

Emerging in 2014, Santa Cruz-hailing hardcore firebrands DRAIN are eternally here for a good time, resulting in them also being in the scene for a long time. Gleeful purveyors of sonic chaos and good vibes, DRAIN have been praised for helping to spearhead the recent renaissance of American hardcore music, with their studio albums, 2020’s California Cursed and 2023’s Living Proof, both heavily praised by critics and fans for their flawless injection of thrash, frantic energy, and perfectly petulant hardcore. Bringing some California vibes to the hardcore punk realms, DRAIN most recently supported Knocked Loose on an extensive North American run, with their own global headline shows, peppered with boogie boards, pool noodles, and fans encouraged to dress up like sharks, the stuff of hedonistic yet wholesome legend.

A band built on the foundational belief that hardcore is limitless, Pennsylvania natives ONE STEP CLOSER have catapulted into scene-stealers of the alternative multiverse, armed with what Pitchfork describes as “singalong accessibility, purgative heaviness, and thoughtful craft”. Cementing their place at the hardcore forefront with their sophomore album, All You Embrace, earlier this year, ONE STEP CLOSER also wowed Australian audiences back in 2023 for their debut down under performances alongside their unique and insatiable concoction of indie rock, post hardcore and shoegaze that has also seen them dazzle alongside Four Year Strong, Koyo, Real Friends and Knuckle Puck.

Forming in college in New Jersey before establishing themselves in Philadelphia, emerging alt idols SWEET PILL satiate with their infectious, innovative and incessantly charming take on emo laced with pop and hardcore. Brandishing crisp guitars, occasional math-rock hues, bouncy melodics and poignant vocals, SWEET PILL penned their debut album, 2022’s Where the Heart Is in the early pandemic stages, going on to support La Dispute and Origami Angel, and earning a spin from Paramore’s Hayley Williams, with the lush track High Hopes featured on Williams’ BBS Radio podcast Everything Is Emo. The band most recently released a brand new EP Starchild, their debut Hopeless Records outing.

Starting life as a solo project for creative cauldron Ned Russin, GLITTERER has since transformed into a solidified quartet, carrying the offbeat charm that permeated Russin’s one-man-show era into a union of earworm melodics, lashings of grunge, smatterings of synths, and woozy vocals. Whether flexing fuzz on fan-favourite singles like Are You Sure? and The Race, both of which are in command of millions of individual Spotify streams, or performing at Furnace Fest and their own headline shows, there’s a modern vintage appeal to GLITTERER that transcends time and space; a fact solidified via their latest 2024 album Rationale via ANTI- Records, perfectly marrying bedroom pop with post punk.

With a torrent of talent locked in for 2025, get set to once again experience the latest and greatest talent from the alternative and punk scene – be sure to secure your spot for NEW BLOOM FEST and we’ll see you in the pit!