Melbourne’s Rock Week was the campaign trail none of us realised we were watching.
Metallica in town. Oasis packing stadiums. AC/DC shaking the MCG. Amyl & The Sniffers shutting down Fed Square before they even played a note. For five days, the entire history of rock seemed to collapse into one city at once. The global giants, the nostalgia waves, the Australian legends and the new blood all crossed paths in a way nobody expected.
But underneath all of it, something else was happening.
Something quieter. Something more important.
Because while Metallica reminded Melbourne what global rock power looks like, and AC/DC reminded us what Australian rock identity has always sounded like, only one band that week felt like the future. Only one band did not feel temporary, nostalgic or historic. Only one band felt like the next chapter.
And five days later, that band walked onto the ARIA Awards stage and proved it.
Five days after that Fed Square shutdown, Amy Taylor walked onto the ARIA Awards stage, accepted Album of the Year, took a breath and said:
“As the new prime minister of Australia, I would like to say: all immigrants welcome.”
And suddenly everything that happened that week in Melbourne made sense.
This was not a joke.
This was not randomness for entertainment.
This was the moment Australia found its next great rock leader, not in parliament, but in the pit.
A week of giants passing through and one band rising from the ground up
To understand why that ARIA line hit so hard, you have to look at what Melbourne just lived through.
Metallica passed through like a weather system
They lit up Melbourne, soaked AC/DC Lane in global rock energy, played their final Australian date in Sydney and wrapped their ANZ tour in Auckland the same night Australia was watching the ARIAs.
A blast of old world power.
A reminder of what stadium rock once was.
They came.
They conquered.
They left.
Oasis delivered nostalgia and disappeared again
Huge crowds.
Huge emotion.
Gone as soon as the planes left the runway.
AC/DC are still here, but everyone can feel the final chapter approaching
They play Sydney tomorrow night with a run of shows still ahead.
Their MCG concerts were historic and emotional, carrying the weight of an era that is much closer to the finish than the start.
These acts did not hand over the torch.
They are the torch, and that scale of fire does not exist for new bands anymore.
And then there is Amyl and The Sniffers
The only band this week that did not feel temporary.
The only band that did not carry even a hint of nostalgia.
The only band that did not peak, but ascended.
Fed Square was not the moment. It was the warning shot.
The free all ages show was shut down in minutes.
Barriers buckled.
Crowd pressure spiked.
Security could not stabilise the front.
The band never even made it onstage.
And instead of hiding or pointing fingers, Amyl took their performance fee and spread $35k across seven Melbourne venues: The Tote, Old Bar, The Curtin, Labour in Vain, Hell’s Kitchen, Last Chance and Cherry Bar.
Last Chance said it clearly:
“Amyl did more in 15 minutes than government has in years.”
This was not beer money.
This was survival money.
Grassroots leadership.
Working class instincts.
No PR gloss.
Exactly the kind of energy Australian rock used to thrive on before the industry polished the edges away.
And then they walked into the MCG like they belonged there
Two nights.
Eighty thousand people each.
No pause.
No doubt.
Just a band from sticky carpet bars walking into one of the biggest stages on earth and looking like they had always belonged on it.
This is what every country waits for.
The moment where a new act looks natural standing next to the giants.
So when Amy Taylor said “all immigrants welcome”, it was not random
It was not shock value.
It was not an off the cuff moment.
It was the final line in a five day story Australia did not realise it was watching.
This entire week reminded Australia what that identity feels like, and who still carries it.
And the world is already catching up, with Playboy preparing a feature on Amy Taylor that frames her as a modern punk icon.
Because the torch AC/DC have carried for fifty years was never about scale. It was about sounding unmistakably Australian.
And that identity is rare now. Very rare.
Most big Australian bands today do not carry that instantly recognisable Australian sound. Parkway Drive are massive and globally respected, but their sound is international. Most would not immediately know they are Australian the moment the guitars hit. Most modern acts blend into global styles, and the Australian-ness gets lost in the mix.
But AC/DC always sounded like Australia.
And Amyl & The Sniffers do too.
And that is why the answer becomes obvious.
A band that came from small venues, loved by kids, respected overseas, raised by community and still dangerous enough to feel real.
A band that shut down Fed Square without even playing.
A band that gave their fee straight back to the venues that shaped them.
A band that walked onto the MCG days later and looked like they had been waiting for that moment their whole lives.
A band that just won Album of the Year.
A band whose frontwoman stood on the biggest stage in Australian music and expressed a version of Australia that feels true in 2025.
Not the nationalism of the 2000s.
Not the aggression that once shaped our image.
Not the flags or the fights.
Not 1976.
Something new.
Something loud.
Something ours.
Amyl and The Sniffers are not the next AC/DC. They are the next Australia.
That is the truth.
Amy Taylor does not need to be the prime minister.
She already leads the Australia that matters, the one that lives in pubs, in pits, in small venues fighting to stay alive, in Fed Square crowds too big to contain and in the teenagers who showed up last Friday because they felt a shift under their feet.
And when she closed her Album of the Year speech with “Fuck the world”, it did not sound like rebellion.
It sounded like leadership.
Melbourne’s Big Rock Week was not nostalgia. It was the handover. And Amy Taylor accepted the job.
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