REVIEW: Kira Mac, Oli Brown, Marisa and the Moths & more on Friday at Winter's End 2025

The start of a new rock year is always a special time. Thoughts of rebirth, new albums, unexpected comebacks, an encroaching festival season – it’s all enough to strike a match in the heart of any Planet Rock listener. And, reliably, Planet Rock’s very own Winter’s End festival is the first stopover on the itinerary. Now in its eighth year, and returning for a third time to Trecco Bay in Porthcawl (home to Rockstock, our other big live band showcase), Winter’s End once again provides a refreshingly interesting three-day bill, one that brings in established favourites like Swedish legends H.E.A.T along with newly discovered talent like Detroit Run and LN.

The first horns must be raised to Friday openers Sons of Liberty who are barely recognisable as the band that opened proceedings at Winter’s End’s 2022 iteration. New singer Russ Grimmett has both the talent and the confidence to kickstart audience participation during ‘Light The Fuse’ and ‘Full Force Five’. The groove laden ‘What’s A Man Supposed To Do’ is especially impressive, with Russ’s hearty vocals occupying a middle ground between Axl Rose-sneer and the more emotive notes of Great White’s sadly late vocalist Jack Russell. After that, there’s an impassioned speech about mental health before well received closer ‘Walk With You’. This is a band transformed.

Faces smeared in black streaks of warpaint and accompanied on stage by a pair of goth-clad dancers, White Raven Down’s music may walk in some dark places, but the trio have enough collective sass to shine a torch therein. Tom Mrazek is frequently dazzling on the drums, and particular kudos must go to frontman Stu Bailey who can sing and solo at the same time. He’s capable of playing some coruscating guitar breaks when the occasion demands, and new song ‘Crimson Sky’ is possibly their best – neat hooks punctuated by crunchy thrash metal gallop.

Despite suffering enough sound problems to sink a small ship, Marisa And The Moths have the raw talent not merely to overcome these, but to make a ton of new friends in the process. “It’s about celebrating your weirdness and awesomeness,” convivial frontwoman Marisa Rodriguez tells us, and through brilliant songs like ‘Devil’ and the sweet-as-cherry melancholic smoothie that is ‘Choke’, we get to do just that. In her lower range, Marisa has something of Evanescence legend Amy Lee about her, but the sheer escalation she can give songs like ‘Who Are You Waiting For?’ takes us someplace else again.

It's a perfect aperitif for the windswept, canyon-wide soundscapes that have been perfected in recent years by Oli Brown & The Dead Collective. The trio – multi-skilled, mucho-talented frontman Oli, guitarist Sam Wood and drummer Wayne Proctor – have honed their art to perfection, and now we simply allow their special genius to wash over us. They open with the epic, end-of-universe chills of ‘Father’, the tone and temperature set from the outset. As ever, there isn’t much talking and there doesn’t need to be – it’s the almost dreamlike, heartfelt openness of songs like ‘Haunted’ and ‘Home Sweet Home’ that simply shine like a full moon on a cold, still night. More like this, please.

First-time headliners Kira Mac are a band in transition. Line-up changes and going from a quintet to a foursome will affect anyone, but most significantly this is a band finally on the cusp to releasing new music. Their somewhat stellar arrival on the UK classic rock scene may have taken a hit due to the delay in their comeback, but judging by the energy of tonight’s performance, they have every intention of making up for lost time.

Fronted, of course, by the talented and amusingly honest Rhiannon Hill, and backed by the instinctively brilliant guitar work and writing skills of Joe Worrall, the band veer from Planet Rock favourites like ‘Hit Me Again’, ‘Mississippi Swinging’ and ‘One Way Ticket’ to Rhi taking a moment to analyse a pair of pants thrown on stage. More importantly, they play a truckload of new material, the entire as-yet-unnamed second album, we are told.

‘Monster’, lined up to be the first single, stands out with a sharp revenge-is-mine chorus while ‘Never Going Back’ headbangs its way in via a riff that wouldn’t be out of place on a classic W.A.S.P. album. ‘Play The Game’ is even better, shades of Black Stone Cherry. It’s clear that Kira Mac’s journey still has some way to go – but hopefully they’ll look back on tonight’s debut Trecco Bay headliner and see some key primary colours forming for that bigger picture.

See 88 spectacular photos of Friday at Winter's End 2025:

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• winter's end
• kira mac
• oli brown and the dead collective
• marisa and the moths