There are certain things you can rely on every summer.

Festival beer will somehow cost more than your first car.

Somebody will forget the tent pegs.

Someone will confidently announce that their phone still has “loads of battery” approximately seventeen minutes before it dies.

And thousands of rock fans will make the pilgrimage up one particularly unforgiving Welsh mountain for another weekend of riffs, friendships, questionable nutritional decisions and absolutely brilliant live music.

Welcome back to Steelhouse Festival.

Held at Hafod-y-Dafal Farm in South Wales from 25–27 July 2025, this year’s Steelhouse brought together The Wildhearts, W.A.S.P., Those Damn Crows, Lita Ford, Wolfmother, Wednesday 13, Kris Barras, Inglorious, Sophie Lloyd, These Wicked Rivers and a mountain-load more.

But Steelhouse 2025 would become about considerably more than the bands.

Because just days before thousands of us headed onto the mountain, the rock and metal world lost Ozzy Osbourne.

Suddenly Steelhouse wasn’t simply another festival weekend.

It became somewhere for the rock community to gather.

Somewhere to remember.

Somewhere to raise a glass.

Somewhere to put our arms around mates.

And somewhere to celebrate the music that brought all of us together in the first place.

There couldn’t really have been a more appropriate place.

Because Steelhouse has never just been a collection of bands playing in a field.

Steelhouse is family.

And in 2025, that family mattered more than ever.

⛰️ Back Up The Mountain

If you’ve never travelled to Steelhouse before, describing the journey as “going to a festival” doesn’t really cover it.

It’s more of an expedition.

You drive towards the Welsh valleys.

You spot the mountain.

You begin climbing.

You continue climbing.

You question several decisions you’ve made during your life.

Your suspension begins writing its resignation letter.

Then, eventually, Hafod-y-Dafal appears.

And suddenly it’s worth every bump.

The views alone make Steelhouse one of Britain’s most distinctive festivals.

The arena sits high above the surrounding valleys, with the huge main stage standing against an enormous natural backdrop.

No city skyline.

No enormous exhibition centre.

No corporate concrete jungle.

Just countryside, guitars and several thousand rock fans.

And unlike the mud-soaked folklore attached to some previous Steelhouse weekends, 2025 arrived surprisingly dry.

Friday in particular brought sunshine and dust rather than waterproofs and rivers flowing through tents.

In Wales.

At Steelhouse.

We were suspicious immediately.

❤️ A Different Kind Of Steelhouse

The passing of Ozzy Osbourne only three days earlier inevitably hung over Friday.

You could feel it.

Ozzy shirts seemed to be everywhere.

People talked about favourite albums.

Favourite gigs.

Favourite Sabbath songs.

Stories were exchanged over drinks.

And throughout the weekend musicians found different ways of acknowledging someone whose influence is impossible to measure.

Steelhouse has always had a strong sense of community, but there was something particularly noticeable about 2025.

People wanted to be together.

The mountain became somewhere to celebrate rock music at exactly the moment when rock fans needed somewhere to celebrate it.

Then the amplifiers fired up.

🔥 FRIDAY – THE WILDHEARTS SET THE MOUNTAIN LOOSE

Friday at Steelhouse has gradually evolved from an opening-night warm-up into a proper festival day.

The 2025 edition offered five bands and enough musical variety to immediately remind everyone what makes Steelhouse booking so entertaining.

Heavy metal.

Alternative rock.

Horror punk.

British rock royalty.

And plenty of noise.

⚡ Asomvel

You couldn’t really have selected a more appropriate band to start this particular Steelhouse.

Asomvel came charging out with their proudly Motörhead-influenced rock ‘n’ roll and immediately gave the mountain exactly what it required.

No unnecessary nonsense.

No gentle introduction.

Just bass, drums, guitars and riffs delivered at considerable volume.

There’s something wonderfully uncomplicated about Asomvel.

They know what they’re about.

They know what their audience wants.

And they absolutely know which direction the volume control should travel.

Up.

Always up.

Against the bizarre backdrop of blazing sunshine and a bone-dry Steelhouse field, they provided the opening kick required to get the weekend underway.

🦋 Marisa And The Moths

Then came a completely different flavour.

Marisa And The Moths have spent years steadily building one of the most passionate grassroots followings in British rock, and Steelhouse provided another opportunity to demonstrate exactly why.

Marisa Rodriguez immediately commands attention.

Part rock singer, part storyteller and part human explosion of energy, she brought emotional weight as well as enormous vocals.

Songs including Get It Off My Chest and Borderline connected hard, particularly because this wasn’t a weekend where emotions were being hidden particularly successfully.

There was heart underneath the riffs.

And the band visibly looked thrilled to be there.

That’s one of the things Steelhouse crowds pick up on immediately.

If a band genuinely looks excited about playing the mountain, the audience responds.

Marisa And The Moths got that response.

🤘 Wolfsbane

Then Friday afternoon became gloriously old-school.

Wolfsbane.

Blaze Bayley.

Big personalities.

Big songs.

Absolutely zero interest in behaving sensibly.

Before their set, the crowd observed a silence in memory of Ozzy.

Thousands of people gathered on a Welsh mountain suddenly went quiet.

No riffs.

No chatter.

Just reflection.

It was simple and extremely powerful.

Then Wolfsbane did what Wolfsbane do.

They made some bloody noise.

Tracks including Money To Burn, Loco, Manhunt and I Like It Hot transformed proceedings into one enormous singalong.

But the most poignant moment arrived with a stripped-back version of Black Sabbath’s Changes.

Under different circumstances it would simply have been a clever cover.

That weekend?

It meant something entirely different.

You could feel the emotion travelling around the field.

💀 Wednesday 13

One of the joys of modern Steelhouse is watching the organisers occasionally lob something slightly unexpected into the classic-rock mixture.

Wednesday 13 certainly qualified.

Corpse paint.

Horror imagery.

Gothic theatrics.

Songs about death, monsters and general unpleasantness.

Lovely stuff.

On paper, Wednesday 13 might have looked slightly strange sandwiched into the Steelhouse landscape.

In reality?

They worked brilliantly.

The likes of Bad Things and 197666 carried enormous hooks underneath all the horror theatrics, while the veteran frontman knew exactly how to keep a festival crowd entertained.

There was also a touching acknowledgement of Joey Jordison, Wednesday’s former Murderdolls bandmate.

For anyone who still thinks Steelhouse should rigidly remain within traditional blues-based classic rock, this was another reminder that occasional curveballs can be enormously good fun.

More of this, please.

❤️ The Wildhearts

Then came The Wildhearts.

And this one felt special.

Ginger Wildheart has produced one of the most varied and consistently brilliant bodies of work in British rock.

Heavy.

Punk.

Pop.

Metal.

Noise.

Hooks.

Occasionally all of those things simultaneously.

Their Steelhouse headline set was therefore never going to be polite.

Songs including Diagnosis, The Jackson Whites, Mazel Tov Cocktail, Vanilla Radio, Everlone and My Baby Is A Headfuck reminded everyone just how ridiculously deep The Wildhearts catalogue runs.

At times Ginger’s voice appeared to be feeling the strain, but if anything that simply added another level of grit to proceedings.

He pushed through.

The band pushed harder.

And the audience responded.

The Wildhearts have always operated somewhere between chaos and genius.

On the Steelhouse mountain, that combination worked perfectly.

Friday night finished with smiles everywhere.

The mountain was awake.

And Saturday was waiting.

☀️ SATURDAY – GUITAR HEROES, ROCK LEGENDS AND W.A.S.P.

Saturday morning at a festival tells you everything you need to know about somebody.

Some people wake refreshed.

Some start cooking breakfast.

Some exercise.

Those people cannot be trusted.

The rest of us emerged from tents looking like we’d been discovered during an archaeological excavation and headed back towards the arena.

Thankfully, Saturday had an absurd amount of music waiting.

⚡ Jayler

The award for “Band Most Likely To Make You Check What Year It Is” went immediately to Jayler.

These young retro rockers have Zeppelin running through their musical DNA.

Huge riffs.

Big hair.

Old-school swagger.

And the kind of youthful energy capable of making anyone over forty require a sit down afterwards.

The queue waiting for Saturday’s arena opening reportedly stretched considerably before gates opened, and plenty of people were clearly there early specifically to see what all the Jayler fuss was about.

They didn’t disappoint.

Yes, the influences are obvious.

But there’s a difference between simply copying your heroes and understanding why that music worked.

Jayler understand.

The challenge now is transforming that obvious talent into songs that become unmistakably theirs.

But as an opening statement?

Very impressive.

🖤 MuddiBrooke

MuddiBrooke followed with something darker and more contemporary.

Brooke’s vocals and guitar work immediately gave the band an edge, while their alternative-rock sound provided a welcome contrast to Jayler’s seventies swagger.

Steelhouse works particularly well when the bill moves around like this.

You don’t want nine variations of exactly the same band.

You want something that makes the person next to you suddenly say:

“Who are these?”

MuddiBrooke did exactly that.

🐉 Scarlet Rebels

There are few things Steelhouse enjoys more than welcoming Welsh bands back onto the mountain.

Scarlet Rebels arrived with plenty of support already waiting.

The Llanelli outfit have steadily established themselves as one of Wales’ strongest modern rock exports, combining big melodic choruses with enough grit to stop everything becoming overly polished.

They’re comfortable on festival stages now.

You can see it.

No nerves.

No trying too hard.

Just a band that knows exactly what it’s doing.

And Steelhouse loves them for it.

🇺🇸 Hillbilly Vegas

Saturday sunshine and southern rock.

Some things simply belong together.

Hillbilly Vegas arrived from Oklahoma carrying enough American swagger to temporarily make the Welsh mountain feel like somewhere considerably closer to Tennessee.

Tracks like High Time For A Good Time did exactly what the title promised.

Steelhouse isn’t complicated when everything clicks.

Band plays riff.

Crowd raises beer.

Everybody smiles.

Repeat until sunburnt.

Lovely.

🎸 Sophie Lloyd

Then came one of Saturday’s most eagerly anticipated performances.

Sophie Lloyd.

There are guitarists.

There are very good guitarists.

And then there are people who appear to have negotiated some sort of separate agreement with the laws of physics.

Lloyd’s technical ability is ridiculous.

Effortless runs.

Huge solos.

Precision playing.

And the confidence of someone increasingly comfortable translating an enormous online audience into actual festival stages.

Marisa Rodriguez joined her for much of the vocal material, providing a familiar Steelhouse face and plenty of extra firepower.

Versions of Thunderstruck and Enter Sandman predictably got thousands of heads moving.

Was this a conventional band performance?

Not really.

Did anyone care?

Not remotely.

Sometimes watching someone absolutely abuse a guitar for an hour is entertainment enough.

💪 Kris Barras Band

Kris Barras and Steelhouse are beginning to feel like relatives who meet at every family gathering.

You’d almost become concerned if he wasn’t there.

But there’s a reason Steelhouse keeps welcoming Kris Barras Band back.

They’re bloody good.

Barras has steadily moved away from straightforward blues-rock into something heavier, more muscular and increasingly arena-sized.

Songs including Hail Mary, Savages, My Parade and Light It Up sounded built for a large outdoor stage.

The band’s musicianship remains ridiculous.

But crucially, it never feels clinical.

There are hooks.

There is emotion.

There are proper songs underneath the guitar heroics.

Barras even headed into the audience during the set, splitting the crowd and turning another appearance on the mountain into a proper communal affair.

🔥 Lita Ford

Then Steelhouse welcomed genuine rock royalty.

Lita Ford.

Runaways history.

Eighties rock history.

Ozzy history.

Guitar history.

There’s something slightly surreal about watching someone whose career stretches back to one of rock’s most fascinating eras standing on a Welsh farm playing to thousands of people.

Yet Lita didn’t arrive merely as a heritage attraction.

She came to rock.

The riffs still landed.

The attitude was still there.

And then came Close My Eyes Forever.

Normally the song carries nostalgia.

At Steelhouse 2025, only days after the loss of Ozzy, it became something else.

The crowd sang.

Lita sang.

And thousands of people collectively remembered the man whose voice originally shared that song with her.

No festival gimmick could manufacture a moment like that.

It simply happened.

And it was beautiful.

🩸 W.A.S.P.

Then Saturday night belonged to W.A.S.P.

Blackie Lawless on top of a Welsh mountain.

There are sentences that would have sounded ridiculous forty years ago and somehow still sound ridiculous now.

But here we were.

For this tour, W.A.S.P. were celebrating their landmark 1984 self-titled debut, giving Steelhouse fans a huge blast of early material alongside later classics.

And musically?

They sounded massive.

I Wanna Be Somebody.

L.O.V.E. Machine.

The Flame.

Wild Child.

Forever Free.

These songs were built for large crowds.

Blackie remains an enormous stage presence, towering above proceedings while the band’s production transformed the comparatively intimate Steelhouse environment into something much larger.

The giant video screens leaned heavily into vintage imagery from the band’s notorious early years, and that archival presentation inevitably carried baggage that hasn’t aged comfortably.

But when everything focused purely on the music, W.A.S.P. delivered.

That catalogue remains astonishingly powerful.

And hearing thousands of people shouting “I wanna be somebody!” underneath the Welsh night sky?

That’s Steelhouse.

Saturday finished loud.

Very loud.

Exactly as intended.

🌧️ SUNDAY – YOUNG BLOOD, OLD HEROES AND A WELSH HOMECOMING

Sunday morning arrived.

The weather finally remembered we were in Wales.

There were darker clouds.

Some rain.

The occasional festival poncho appeared.

Nature was correcting itself.

But nobody was going anywhere.

Because Sunday had eight bands waiting.

And the final one carried considerable significance.

🌞 Kit Trigg

Kit Trigg opened Sunday with laid-back, warm, bluesy rock that somehow managed to create sunshine even when the actual weather wasn’t fully cooperating.

There was a technical interruption early in the performance when power disappeared, but the band recovered quickly and continued without allowing the awkward moment to derail things.

That tells you plenty about a young band.

Festivals throw problems at musicians.

Good bands deal with them.

Kit Trigg dealt with it.

There was personality here too — an easy-going vibe and enough character to suggest we’ll be hearing considerably more from them.

A touching dedication to a late friend added an unexpected emotional moment to the opening set.

⚔️ Tailgunner

Then somebody turned the heavy-metal switch back on.

Tailgunner came flying out like they’d been launched directly from 1983.

Twin guitars.

Speed.

Leather.

Classic metal.

Enormous enthusiasm.

There are obvious echoes of Maiden, Priest and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal running through them, but importantly there’s youth on their side.

This isn’t older musicians recreating the era.

This is another generation discovering why that music was so bloody exciting in the first place.

Tailgunner were fast, loud and gloriously enthusiastic.

Sunday was properly underway.

💥 The Treatment

The Treatment understand festivals.

You need riffs.

Hooks.

Movement.

Energy.

And songs capable of grabbing people who might only vaguely recognise your name.

They tick every box.

Shake The Mountain was almost absurdly appropriate given our geographical location.

There’s no need to overcomplicate The Treatment.

They’re a hard-rock band.

They play hard rock.

They do it very well.

Sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

🌲 These Wicked Rivers

And then came one of those Steelhouse bands.

You know the ones.

The acts that don’t simply play the festival.

They become part of it.

These Wicked Rivers have developed a remarkably close relationship with the British rock community, and their Steelhouse appearance showed why.

There’s warmth to this band.

That sounds like a strange thing to say about amplified guitars, but it’s true.

Songs such as The Family, Evergreen and When The War Is Won carry enormous emotional weight without becoming miserable.

There’s groove.

There’s southern rock.

There’s blues.

There’s classic British rock.

But there’s also something unmistakably theirs.

Watching people sing When The War Is Won together on a mountain after an emotional week was one of those moments where Steelhouse stopped being a festival and briefly became something considerably more personal.

Beautiful band.

Beautiful set.

⚙️ The Raven Age

Time for something heavier again.

The Raven Age brought polished modern metal to Sunday afternoon.

Chugging guitars.

Progressive touches.

Clean and aggressive vocals.

Precision.

Power.

Their sound was arguably further from Steelhouse’s traditional centre ground than some bands across the weekend, but that’s precisely why bookings like this are useful.

Festivals need movement.

They need different flavours.

They need moments where somebody who came for Wolfmother accidentally discovers a modern metal band.

The Raven Age brought muscle and technical skill.

🎤 Inglorious

Inglorious returned following a period away, and the biggest talking point remained exactly what it has always been.

Nathan James.

What.

A.

Voice.

Seriously.

There aren’t many British rock singers capable of delivering that combination of range, power and theatricality.

With guitarist Richard Shaw adding additional firepower, Inglorious sounded rejuvenated.

Holy Water proved particularly impressive, James’ vocals soaring over the mountain exactly as nature intended.

Inglorious have sometimes felt like a band whose potential and circumstances haven’t always aligned.

Steelhouse 2025 suggested there’s still plenty left in the tank.

🐺 Wolfmother

Then came Australia.

More specifically:

Wolfmother.

If someone built a machine capable of transforming Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, psychedelic rock and approximately seventeen tonnes of fuzz into one human being, Andrew Stockdale would probably walk out of it.

Wolfmother riffs are enormous.

Not complicated.

Not fashionable.

Just enormous.

That bass-heavy psychedelic sound rolled across Hafod-y-Dafal like an approaching weather system.

And when songs such as Woman and Joker And The Thief appear in the catalogue, you’ve got some serious festival ammunition.

Wolfmother might not spend the entire show sprinting around the stage.

They don’t need to.

The riffs are doing the running.

Close your eyes and the mountain suddenly becomes 1972.

Open them again and somebody is eating cheesy chips next to you.

Steelhouse.

🐦‍⬛ Those Damn Crows

And then it was time.

The moment Steelhouse 2025 had been moving towards all weekend.

Those Damn Crows.

A Welsh band.

Headlining a Welsh rock festival.

On top of a Welsh mountain.

This wasn’t simply another booking.

This was a milestone.

Those Damn Crows had climbed their own mountain to get here.

Years of touring.

Grassroots venues.

Support slots.

Album cycles.

Festivals.

Long drives.

Small rooms becoming larger rooms.

Crowds becoming bigger crowds.

Until finally:

Steelhouse headliners.

And they absolutely owned it.

From the moment the introduction hit and the band walked onto that enormous stage, there was a sense that something important was happening.

Shane Greenhall looked energised.

Ronnie Huxford sat towering above proceedings behind the drums.

The production was enormous.

Lights exploded across the stage.

Pyro punctuated songs.

And suddenly tracks that had once been played in considerably smaller venues felt enormous.

Man On Fire.

No Surrender.

Let’s Go Psycho.

These aren’t merely promising modern-rock songs anymore.

They’re festival songs.

They’re songs thousands of people know.

They’re songs people shout back.

Then came the emotional moments.

The Night Train carried particular significance as Greenhall acknowledged those no longer with us and reflected on Ozzy.

Later, This Time I’m Ready hit even harder.

Anyone familiar with that song knows what it can do inside a smaller venue.

On a Welsh mountain, with thousands of voices around you after a weekend already shaped by loss and remembrance?

Devastating.

In the best possible way.

Then Blink Of An Eye delivered another reminder of what Those Damn Crows do better than many bands operating at their level.

They connect.

That’s the secret.

There are heavier bands.

There are flashier bands.

There are bands with more complicated songs.

But Those Damn Crows have developed a relationship with their audience built around honesty.

People believe them.

People care.

And on Sunday night, Steelhouse felt like the culmination of everything they’ve been building.

A Welsh rock band didn’t merely headline.

They belonged there.

No qualification.

No novelty.

No “local boys done good” sympathy.

They earned it.

Those Damn Crows walked onto the Steelhouse stage as headliners.

They walked off looking like a band capable of headlining considerably more.

What a way to finish the weekend.

🎸 The VIP Acoustic Sessions – A Brilliant Addition

One particularly welcome development in 2025 was the introduction of VIP acoustic performances.

And this worked brilliantly.

Taking artists away from the enormous main-stage production and dropping them into a considerably more intimate environment gave fans something genuinely different.

Jayler, Kris Barras, Kit Trigg, These Wicked Rivers and Dan Byrne were among those delivering stripped-down appearances during the weekend.

It wasn’t merely “same songs, smaller room”.

The acoustic setting allowed personalities and songwriting to come forward.

And because Steelhouse already possesses such a strong community atmosphere, the format suited the festival perfectly.

Hopefully it’s something that remains part of the mountain experience.

🍻 Steelhouse Isn’t Just A Line-Up

Here’s the important bit.

You can analyse Steelhouse line-ups all day.

Every year somebody thinks it’s incredible.

Somebody thinks it’s terrible.

Somebody announces on Facebook they’re definitely not going.

Then six months later you bump into them near the bar wearing a Steelhouse wristband.

Standard procedure.

But Steelhouse cannot really be judged purely from a poster.

Because the festival’s greatest strength isn’t any individual band.

It’s everything around them.

It’s sitting outside your tent first thing in the morning discussing yesterday’s sets.

It’s bumping into somebody you only ever see once a year.

It’s watching bands mingle around the arena.

It’s meeting musicians at signing sessions.

It’s hearing somebody across the campsite yell your name.

It’s staring across the valleys while a guitar solo disappears into the distance.

It’s questionable breakfast choices.

It’s overpriced festival food you will absolutely buy anyway.

It’s beer.

It’s dust.

It’s mud when Wales remembers what it’s supposed to be doing.

It’s the walk back to the tent while your ears are still ringing.

And it’s that completely irrational decision on Sunday night to stay awake for another drink despite knowing perfectly well you’ve got to pack everything tomorrow.

That is Steelhouse.

🖤 Remembering Ozzy

Steelhouse 2025 will inevitably be remembered partly because of when it happened.

Ozzy Osbourne’s passing occurred only days beforehand.

For thousands attending, Steelhouse became the first opportunity to gather with other rock fans afterwards.

There wasn’t one enormous elaborate tribute dominating proceedings.

Instead, Ozzy’s presence appeared throughout the weekend.

A guitar carrying his name.

A moment of silence.

Wolfsbane performing Changes.

Lita Ford singing Close My Eyes Forever.

Artists mentioning him.

Fans wearing shirts.

People raising drinks.

Those Damn Crows dedicating thoughts towards him during their emotional homecoming.

It felt natural.

Rock music lost one of its defining characters.

Steelhouse allowed people to remember him by doing the thing he spent his life championing.

Listening to loud music together.

There was something very fitting about that.

⭐ Standout Performances

Picking favourites at Steelhouse is dangerous.

Mention Band A and somebody will immediately explain why Band B was seventeen times better.

But several performances absolutely deserve recognition.

Those Damn Crows delivered the weekend’s defining moment.

This was their mountain.

An emotional, powerful and unquestionably headline-worthy homecoming.

Lita Ford gave us perhaps the most poignant individual song of the festival with Close My Eyes Forever.

The Wildhearts reminded everybody that Ginger remains one of British rock’s most distinctive songwriters.

Kris Barras Band demonstrated again why they’re increasingly difficult to ignore on major British rock bills.

These Wicked Rivers proved community and emotional connection can hit just as hard as sheer volume.

Jayler justified the rapidly growing buzz around them.

Wolfmother provided enough riffs to alter local geological formations.

And W.A.S.P. brought genuine heavy-metal history onto Hafod-y-Dafal.

That’s a pretty good weekend by anyone’s standards.

🏔️ The Mountain Wins Again

Every year Steelhouse seems to pull the same trick.

You arrive wondering whether your back will survive camping.

You complain about the road.

You complain about carrying things.

You complain about the price of something.

Your phone signal disappears.

Your tent develops a mysterious problem.

At some point the weather tries something.

You swear you’re far too old for this nonsense.

Then the stage lights come on.

The mountains stretch out behind you.

Somebody hands you a drink.

Your mates are standing beside you.

A guitar kicks in.

And suddenly you’re already talking about next year.

That’s why Steelhouse survives.

That’s why people return.

And that’s why this independent festival has developed such loyalty.

It still feels human.

It still feels like people genuinely care whether you’re having a good weekend.

It still allows young bands to play in front of meaningful crowds.

It still treats rock music like a broad church rather than something preserved behind glass.

And most importantly, it still feels unmistakably Welsh.

🤘 THE RIFF REPORT VERDICT

Steelhouse Festival 2025 was about much more than three headline bands.

It arrived during an emotional week for rock and metal.

Instead of allowing that sadness to overwhelm proceedings, the festival community transformed it into something positive.

We remembered.

We laughed.

We sang.

We raised drinks.

And then we turned the amplifiers up.

Friday gave us The Wildhearts at their gloriously unpredictable best, alongside Wednesday 13’s horror show, Wolfsbane’s emotional Sabbath tribute and an excellent showing from Marisa And The Moths.

Saturday brought ridiculous guitar talent from Sophie Lloyd, another muscular performance from Kris Barras, genuine rock royalty in Lita Ford and a huge headline spectacle from W.A.S.P.

Sunday showcased the future through Kit Trigg and Tailgunner, the strength of the current British scene through These Wicked Rivers, The Treatment and The Raven Age, a rejuvenated Inglorious and a mountain full of psychedelic riffs courtesy of Wolfmother.

And then Those Damn Crows brought everything home.

Literally.

A Welsh band headlining one of Wales’ greatest rock festivals should always feel significant.

But considering the journey Those Damn Crows have taken and the emotional circumstances surrounding the entire weekend, this felt particularly special.

When those final notes disappeared across the valleys, Steelhouse 2025 had given us another reminder that rock ‘n’ roll isn’t really about album sales, streaming numbers or social media algorithms.

It’s people.

It’s community.

It’s memories.

It’s standing beside complete strangers and somehow knowing exactly why they’re there.

For one weekend every summer, thousands of us climb that ridiculous road and build our own little rock ‘n’ roll village on top of a Welsh mountain.

Then Monday arrives.

The tents disappear.

The field slowly empties.

The amplifiers go quiet.

And Hafod-y-Dafal becomes a farm again.

But the memories come back down the mountain with us.

Steelhouse 2025 was emotional.

Steelhouse 2025 was loud.

Steelhouse 2025 was Welsh.

Steelhouse 2025 was bloody brilliant.

And somewhere above Ebbw Vale, you could almost imagine one final voice looking down at all of us.

“Keep going, you lunatics.”

🏔️ Rocio y Mynydd.

🎸 Rock the Mountain.

🖤 Raise one for Ozzy.

🤘 And we’ll see you back up there again.