metal

Thornhill

3 festivals played ↓

Melbourne five-piece who traded straight metalcore for something sleeker and more atmospheric — riffs built around croon-to-scream dynamics.

Thornhill trace back to Vermont Secondary College in outer suburban Melbourne, where Jacob Charlton, Ben Maida, Sam Anderson and Ethan McCann first played together entering Battle of the Bands competitions in 2015. That line-up became one of the more widely followed acts in the Australian heavy scene, later releasing through the Melbourne label UNFD.

Early singles such as "XY", featuring Void of Vision's Jack Bergin, and the EP 13 built momentum through heavy rotation on Triple J's Home and Hosed segment. Winning a Triple J Unearthed competition earned the band a support slot with Architects in 2017, around the same time guitarist Sam Anderson was replaced by Matt van Duppen.

Signing to UNFD in 2018, Thornhill released the Butterfly EP and played their first headline show to a sold-out crowd at Melbourne's Cherry Bar. Support tours with Ocean Grove, Make Them Suffer and In Hearts Wake followed as the band built toward a full-length debut.

Their debut album, The Dark Pool, arrived in 2019 on UNFD and debuted at number 20 on the ARIA Albums Chart, setting out the template: metalcore structures loosened by atmosphere, clean singing carrying much of the melodic weight, and guitars that lean as often on texture as on chugging.

The follow-up, Heroine, pushed further from the genre's usual reference points, drawing in alternative rock and a moodier, more cinematic production. Vocalist Jacob Charlton's shifts between crooning and screaming remain the band's most identifiable feature, and a third album, Bodies, followed in 2025.

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