REVIEW: H.E.A.T, Beaux Gris Gris, LN and more on Sunday at Winter's End 2025

Fresh from hosting the Sunday morning quiz, our man Darren Redick is back to introduce Kit Trigg, a jovial trio that have endured a sleepless drive from Scotland. Their free-spirited, skate-ready rock tunes “could actually be a dream,” according to Kit Trigg’s perma-grinning frontman of the same name. Happy hour though it is, he dedicates a beautifully emotional ‘Grow with The Flow’ to Will, a late friend and fellow skateboarder, and we groove our way home via a playful cover of ‘Proud Mary’ and the band’s calling card, ‘Goin’ For Glory’.

Of different mettle (and metal) are Newcastle’s LN. Daubed in pagan make-up and bristling with primal, warrior soul, this is a bloodily metallic Planet Rock debut for a band we’re sure to be hearing more from. As mesmeric as they are ear-mangling, they’re led by Ellen Hirst, a whirling dervish you can’t look away from as she stomps, leaps and contorts. Her voice is a thing to die for, as beautiful in ‘Mothers’ as it is corrosive during ‘Shield Wall’. ‘Summon’, meanwhile, is like a reverse exorcism which leaves the singer daubed in (presumably) fake blood. A festival highlight.

We’re back in comparatively comfortable territory with DeVere, not so much the revival of glam metal some were expecting, but a solidly riff-based act closer in sound to Teutonic terrors Accept. What they lack in subtlety, ‘Like Lightning’ and ‘Déjà vu’ make up for in sheer heft. Between bands, Planet Rock’s Ian Danter salutes the team’s hard-working stage crew before welcoming an act that sounds as if they’ve just stepped off the pages of a lost fairytale. Serpentyne cut their own slice of the symphonic rock cake with Maggiebeth Sand’s crystal clean, near-operatic vocals quite unlike anything else this weekend.

Later, it only takes a few penetratingly distorted notes to drag us screaming willingly into MuddiBrooke’s alt.rock world. Frontwoman Brooke instinctively veers from tender melody to cathartic scream during the likes of ‘ADHD’. She strikes a tantalising balance between control and anguish, something you might recall a certain Mr Cobain doing rather decently too. ‘Straightjacket’ starts with a fuzzy bass riff that builds to another neat distillation of rapid-fire angst. You don’t just listen to MuddiBrooke, you actually feel it.

Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse have the distinction of creating Planet Rock’s second most played song of 2024 – a gleeful, hip-shaking rampage called ‘Oh Yeah’. That’s on this colourful outfit’s menu tonight, along with other knee-tremblers like ‘Wild Woman’, sung by the band’s Louisiana-born chanteuse Greta Valenti from the photo pit. There’s even a smoochy take on Queen Of The Stone Age’s ‘Make It Wit Chu’, but above all this is New Orleans-kissed swampland blues and soul fired up by smoking hot guitar, and it’s spellbinding. Why have one thing when Beaux Gris Gris can give you the whole lot?

Laurence Jones is no one trick pony either. He’s obviously a blues man at heart, and a fine exponent of showing what a six-string can do in that department, but he cites the likes of Royal Blood and Jack White as influences too. Tonight, he even throws in a rocked-up cover of The Cure’s ‘A Forest’, not something even the most experienced gig-goer can have expected. Jumping on the spot as he wrings impossible sounding notes from that guitar, Jones is also no bad singer. Fronting a versatile power trio, tonight’s set may not be the most colourful, but eloquent rootsy rock with the capacity to surprise it most certainly is.

It’s hard to think of a better way to close out an action-packed, genre-fluid festival like Winter’s End than with the type of exuberant, uber positive rock show that only a band like H.E.A.T. can deliver. The Swedish act is cresting a wave right now, so confident are they that opening song ‘Disaster’, their new single, actually feels like an old friend already. Then, brace yourself, as one mountainously orchestrated hook follows another – ‘Emergency’ featuring Jona Tee’s lustrous keyboard sounds, the dynamic ‘Dangerous Ground’ and the almost annoyingly catchy ‘Hollywood’, which might still be playing in your memory when you’re trying to sleep.

Frontman Kenny Leckremo, part rock star, part retro gym instructor, is our 1980s-honed master of ceremonies, eagerly conducting 90 minutes of sheer escapism. Sure, it’s retro and caught in a time when David Hasselhoff drove a talking car and Europe parped their way to Number One, but any worthy rocker needs an occasional release from grim modern life nonsense, and this is exactly it. Rising Britrock singer Chez Kane steps out to duet with Kenny on ‘In And Out Of Trouble’, and later ‘Bad Time For Love’, a bombastic new song, continues to burn H.E.A.T.’s big chorus bonfire.

This is a headliner that relentlessly knocks on the door – massed harmonies, high notes, erudite soloing that doesn’t overstay its welcome – until that door just crashes down and you’re swept away by positive caffeine bomb energy. Sadly, it has to end eventually – but the good news for anyone missing Planet Rock festival action already is that tickets for this November’s Planet Rockstock are on sale on 28th February! More details soon!

See 115 photos of Sunday at Winter's End 2025:

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• winter's end
• h.e.a.t
• laurence jones