REVIEW: Saturday at Planet Rockstock 2025

While 11am may be the earliest Irish rockers Black Dog Moon have ever started a gig, they rise to the challenge with biker anthems and hard rock grit, before DeVere bring some retro-leaning but impressively jagged riffs to the Graham Harding Stage. There’s a touch of glamour about the London quartet, but singer Sam Cassidy isn’t too proud to attempt repairs to the drumkit mid-set. Attic Theory have fewer onstage problems, thumping their way through post-grunge alt rock like ‘Affirmation’, stuff that isn’t shy of tackling big subjects.

The Heavy Souls, though, are a class apart, especially when the affecting and near spiritual ‘Sleepwalking’ takes us to interestingly deep places. There are flashes of Rival Sons in the Sheffield outfit’s chemistry, but it takes a frontman as good as Clark Vaughan to bring it to the boil. Then, rather like a barney between Mötley Crüe and AC/DC in a glitter factory, the mostly German outfit Sweet Electric amp up the fun factor, before the intriguing Bobbie Dazzle brings this second stage programme to a close via a set so 70s-nostalgic you can practically smell the incense. If this was a vehicle, it’d be a classic VW campervan, registered to singer and flautist Siân Greenaway, formerly frontwoman of stoner rockers Alunah prior to her impressive reinvention a few years ago.

There’s certainly something of the night about main stage debutants Black Orchid Empire. Prog metal is a tricky genre to master without serious firepower, but songs like ‘Hydrogen’ and ‘Labyrinth’ move capably from places of solace to rattling eardrums, the trio exploiting some big weaponry. ‘Angelfire’ may have a loaded, muscular riff, but in these hands the music dances around like a nimble-footed boxer.

The soul of a warrior is then somehow brought to metallic life by the wondrous one-off that is LN. Ecstatically received, the eponymous pagan metal princess (from Newcastle if you must know) switches from clean vocal to banshee rage in a blink. ‘Mothers’ and ‘Broken Heart’ invoke tribal beats from an ancient past, soaring into expressions of anguish that’d be recognisable in any era. ‘Summon’, in contrast, is a devilishly libidinous stomp in which our heroine smears herself in (presumably fake) blood.

After a happy birthday singalong for Paul Anthony - Darren Redick asks us to “sing in your own key so that it sounds horrible” and isn’t disappointed – Dan Byrne takes the stage and swiftly proves why there’s beehive-level buzz on his young shoulders right now. Temporary monitor problems don’t dent the man’s extraordinary vocal delivery – it’s part Chris Stapleton, part Glenn Hughes, and 100% Daniel Byrne. There’s the stunning ballad ‘Easier’, a rousing ‘Sentimental’, and killer new song ‘Saviour’; Byrne at his earnest, rowdiest best.

Mark Jeeves leads a deserved ovation for Wyatt, remarkably fresh looking after his 700-mile odyssey – and if that was heroic, we must also commend Kris Barras who courageously goes ahead with tonight’s Hollow Souls show despite a recent bereavement. The band, fronted by Kris Barras Band alumni Phoebe Jane and also featuring that outfit’s multi-talented Josiah Manning, is what Kris calls “a blues passion project”. The songs – like ‘Borderline’ and ‘Bad Things’ – are sinewy rockers with feel over ferocity, and ‘Burn It To The Ground’, arguably the best of them, tonight features a guest appearance from Planet Rock’s Elles Bailey. It’s also an opportunity to revisit misplaced KBB gems like ‘Propane’ and build to a rousing climax via slightly redrawn interpretations of ‘My Parade’ and ‘Hail Mary’.

Less a standard headline performance and more like being recruited for a team sport, Californian legends Ugly Kid Joe, led by master entertainer Whitfield Crane, soon have the crowd eating from their collective palm. Forget the fact that most people don’t actually know many of the songs – though the ones they do, ‘Cats In The Cradle’, ‘I’m Alright’ and obviously ‘Everything About You’, are received like winning lottery tickets – Whit still charms, unites and amuses. Ably backed by guitarist and high school friend Klaus Eichstadt, tonight playing an instrument he built himself at that same school, Ugly Kid Joe’s set is a grown-up, nostalgic take on surf rock, always one step from a sly laugh, always with a glint in its eye.

There are more congratulations to a beaming and only slightly embarrassed looking Wyatt. “He did what he did and he still came to the rock show,” marvels Whit before launching into ‘Kill The Pain’. Then, one fan, Jason, has ‘Milkman’s Son’ dedicated to him for his 50th birthday. Another you-had-to-be-there moment comes when Whit invites touring guitarist Chris Catalyst, who he describes as “a walking encyclopaedia of rock facts”, to lead the predominantly Welsh crowd through a singalong of the nation’s ‘other’ national anthem, the Manics’ ‘A Design For Life’. Whit sits at the back, cross-legged, thoroughly entertained by the spectacle. Sometime beyond midnight after the ubiquitous ‘Everything About You’, we exit Trecco Bay feeling much the same way.

Saturday at Planet Rockstock 2025 in photos:

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