Bloom vocalist Jono Hawkey discusses releasing two albums within a year of each other, how metalcore is sexy again, drinking champagne under the Eiffel Tower, and their upcoming Australian tour.
Bloom
Sydney melodic hardcore five-piece Bloom begin their national tour on February 11th to officially launch their second album The Light We Chase.
It’s been a wild two years for Bloom, they released their 2024 debut album Maybe In Another Life to critical acclaim and to prove it wasn’t a fluke they followed it up with The Light We Chase just a year later.
To capitalise on this momentum Bloom spent most of 2025 on the road including tours with Silverstein in Europe and North America, and supporting bands like Chelsea Grin, Currents, and Trophy Eyes. When the album was released in October they celebrated with a day off in Paris while on a European tour with Thornhill and Ocean Grove.
“I will hold that day close to me until the day I die,” vocalist Jono Hawkey tells The Music over Zoom.
“It was such a special day. We drank champagne in front of the Eiffel Tower. We got to stop and celebrate and acknowledge how in 2025 we started the album in January of that year and to be a part of a tour package, where we’re surrounded by our best friends for three weeks straight, to be in a beautiful city, to be sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower, to be drinking champagne and eating charcuterie.
“It was truly one of those incredible special moments that I will always look back on fondly.”
These Australian shows will be the only time fans will get to hear all of the songs from The Light We Chase live. It won’t be a from start to finish album play-through, but instead the songs will be scattered in with the best of their older material.
This wasn’t always the plan, however, as Hawkey admits he never intended to play all the songs on the album.
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“We were just going to do the best songs from the album, songs people love and go from that and I think it was really me and Oliver [Butler, bassist] bouncing ideas around the setlist,” he explains. “Once we kind of had this brainstorm of ‘we should do this song into this song’ and ‘it’d be really cool if we did this for this’ and you throw your ideas around.
“We looked at the setlist and we had written down 10 of the 11 songs from the album as part of the setlist. At that point we went, ‘Well, what’s one more song?’, it’s not going to be played one through 11. We did that for Maybe In Another Life and that was fun, but I think this tour is the most we’ve ever cared about the flow, the progression, the different moments that we want to hit.
“I think because The Light We Chase is quite varied sonically, it has quite high intensity moments,” he adds. “It has quite withdrawn and more of those like big atmospherey sort of moments. We want to create a setlist that really guides through the motions rather than just just playing the album in full and then chucking on some old songs at the end.”
The fact that Bloom have produced two back-to-back albums of such high quality has been one of the reasons why they’re seen as one of the most exciting Australian metalcore bands to watch right now.
On paper, the albums were only two years apart but Bloom had been sitting on Maybe In Another Life for a year and a half. By the time it saw the light of day they were already itching to get back into the studio.
“We went into those recording dates at the start of the year [for The Light We Chase],” Hawkey explains. “Not necessarily with the pressure of, ‘Here’s a deadline, it’s got to be out by this time’, but we knew from Maybe In Another Life how painful it was dragging that process out. By the time the album’s released, you’re already sick of the songs, they’ve kind of been played to death.
“So I think we knew that we had a really big year of touring coming up and we knew that there were going to be windows that we could hit. If we do these dates here, if we make sure that we’ve got music videos, scheduled, booked, concepts done by this time, we can start rollout in August and then have the album by October.
“We used the experience we had with Maybe In Another Life of that future planning and then just the experience of what releasing an album entails to enable us to speed through the process,” he continues. “I think we had more foresight this time around knowing that rolling out an album isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but we knew that it was possible and it made sense to line it up with a busy year of touring. It was cool that we pulled that off.”
Considering they had written, recorded and released The Light We Chase in under a year, it’s not impossible to imagine Bloom going for a trifecta and releasing another album in 2026. However, Hawkey wants to savour The Light We Chase for a while longer first.
“I think if we wanted to release an album in 2026, we would have had to have started it last week,” Hawkey laughs.
“When we look at the timeline of Maybe In Another Life to where we are right now… that album is mid-2022, early-2023, that project starts for us [then]. Our internal clock starts ticking from the second we start the process of making that album. That obviously had a much longer drawn out release. We had the signing to Pure Noise Records and for your debut you really want to make sure you get everything right the first time. The Light We Chase felt much, much faster because it was much, much faster.
“So I think we’re going to pump the brakes, just a little bit, just a touch and kind of enjoy The Light We Chase for a little bit longer,” he muses. “It still feels really new and fresh to us and I think that’s exciting.”
Being able to support them on tour and watch their Australian friends in Thornhill so closely has been extremely inspirational for Hawkey. After the early success of bands like Parkway Drive, The Amity Affliction and Northlane there now feels like a new wave of Australian bands making an impact and flying the alternative flag. It’s the perfect time to be an up and coming band in the world of metalcore.
“Metalcore has gotten sexy again,” he asserts. “We are in a beautiful time to be writing metalcore… It’s really cool to see a band that has stuck to their guns and really put what they want to do and how they want their band to look and sound and what their [live experience] is like and put such paramount importance on that, backing themselves and seeing the point that they’re at now.
“Their 2025 was insane, ARIA, Sleep Token, all that sort of stuff. I think they as individuals are very incredibly talented musicians,” he continues.
“They’ve given us a lot of tips and shown us different ways of thinking of things and I think we’ve learnt a lot from them and it’s great having that close personal relationship with them.”
Tickets to Bloom’s Australian tour are on sale now.
DESTROY ALL LINES & PURE NOISE RECORDS PRESENTS
BLOOM
THE LIGHT WE CHASE – AUSTRALIAN TOUR
SUPPORTED BY AVOID (USA)
Wednesday 11 February 2026 – Crowbar, Brisbane
Friday 13 February 2026 – Mo’s Desert Clubhouse, Gold Coast
Saturday 14 February 2026 – Hamilton Station Hotel, Newcastle
Sunday 15 February 2026 – Crowbar, Sydney
Tuesday 17 February 2026 – Dicey Rileys, Wollongong
Wednesday 18 February 2026 – Max Watts, Melbourne
Friday 20 February 2026 – Pelly Bar, Frankston
Saturday 21 February 2026 – Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative
Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source themusic.com.au ’
