REVIEW: Florence Black, The Treatment, The New Roses and more rock Winter's End 2025

Those around early enough on Saturday are treated to the sight of Planet Rock presenter and Winter’s End host Darren Redick throwing some bass guitar shapes on stage himself. Encouraged by spectators our man indulges in some Pete Townsend-style jumps. “Let me see if the first band’s ready and then we can do some real stuff,” he laughs. “Oh, and don’t tell anyone I did this!” Oops.

Openers proper Daylight Robbery don’t jump around but do deliver some sinewy, honed melodic rock. The tuneful ‘Liar’ elicits the best from Tony Nicholl’s big voice, while ‘Edwards No 8’ salutes the legendary Birmingham nightclub that hosted everything from Pearl Jam to this writer’s 21st birthday bash.

Worcestershire’s Chloe Mogg turns out to have plenty of Alanis Morissette sneer and a few jagged little pills of her own, the best of which is a scything little revenge bomb called ‘Better Off’.

Creeping Jean then bring style and retro rock substance, making the cool and quirky look easy. The Brighton quintet are nearly always the smartest dressed band on any festival stage, but crucially they’ve got the instantly chantable, vintage chic tunes to back it all up.

Sadly, a serious technical issue with their gear sees Detroit Run abandon their set after only two incomplete songs. The band were arguably the most exciting debutant on the bill, their penetrative, alternative-leaning mash-up of rock with electronics utterly out on its own. In fact, the only parallel we can make is with futurist US rockers Starset, not a comparison this writer makes lightly. Let’s hope Detroit can be Run again soon.

The evening performances kick off with powerhouse vocalist Dan Byrne in front of a commendably full venue. Songs like ‘Hard To Breathe’ and ‘Hate Me’ are familiar to many now, but even better is new anthem ‘Sentimental’. Elastic with soul and melody, it’s the sort of thing Glenn Hughes puts his name to when he gets the funk out, and the fact that Dan’s voice can stand alongside that great man shows you just how good this young artist is.

German rockers The New Roses, a reliably chart-bothering band in their homeland, almost didn’t make it today due to flight delays – and sadly their instruments are still in Amsterdam. “It really put the damn into Amsterdam,” frontman Timmy Rough – all film star looks and sandpaper vocals – tells us. But, in the spirit of community that so often unites us, Glenn Quinn from Dan Byrne’s band lends out his guitars, while Darren’s bass makes a second appearance today in the hands of four-stringer Hardy. The band – dazed, delighted, relieved – rock out with great songs like ‘Down By The River’.

Special guests The Treatment are becoming a band worthy of the epithet ‘British steel’, usually reserved for greats like Judas Priest and Saxon. They’ve survived several contrasting incarnations, hopeful ups followed by devastating downs, and yet here they are in 2025, explosively erupting anthem after anthem, heavy rock’s equivalent of downing vodka shots while wired to a defibrillator. ‘Let It Begin’, ‘Eyes On You’, ‘Hang Them High’; all adrenalized rock-outs, lapped up by the assembled, headbanging Planet Rock faithful.

“We can’t explain how happy we are,” gushes frontman Tom Rampton. He doesn’t need to – there has rarely been so much hair thrashing about on a stage as there is tonight during ‘Departed’. Given the vast number of opportunities they’ve had to fade away, how good was it to see them flying high tonight, in their absolute element?

The rise of headliners Florence Black, meanwhile, has been both inexorable and heartily deserved. By distancing themselves from self-publicity, the hard-hitting trio – from Merthyr Tydfil, barely 40 miles away – have allowed the music to do the talking. That would nevertheless have been a pretty one-sided conversation had these songs not hit as hard as a hammer to glass.

Tonight this packed room feeds from their fulsome menu, as songs like ‘Start Again’, ‘Solid 9’ and ‘Can You Feel It’ work their voodoo. There’s ‘On The Ropes’, a hell-for-leather mangling of hardcore and melodic metal, drummer Perry Davies blasting out harsh vocals, frontman Tristan Thomas answering with the clean. While ‘Back To The End’ seems a total contrast, like contemplating life from the window of a moving train compared to flying full tilt off the rails, it’s still plainly the work of the same band. This is now a unit firm-footed in its identity and standing aside, unconcerned, from anything resembling a ‘scene’.

By mid-set, Tristan is soaked in sweat, a sign of how much he is throwing into this. The guitar artillery, largely his own creation, is often but the breadth of a matchstick away from what most of us would define as thrash – ‘Bed Of Nails’ crunching its way into a stampeding ‘Zulu’ – but the cathartic hooks the band has made its calling card add the kind of class that can’t be bought. For these local heroes, fresh from touring Europe with Tremonti, this was some homecoming.

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