Pentre Fest 2025 Saturday 22nd Feb Review

On Saturday, I had an afternoon free, so I took a trip to Deeside to catch the almighty Pentre Fest. If Facebook hasn’t plastered you with adverts for it, as it has me, it is a two-day Rock and metal festival held at Mcleans Pub. It hosts two stages, one inside (for the heavier stuff) and one outside, which hosts some amazing acoustic artists. I was only able to stay for a short while, but here’s what I got.

 

First off, the festival itself. It is a family-friendly festival, so if you’ve got any mini moshers they’ll love being able to experience live music. The host for the festival, Beanie, is a ray of sunshine. Sporting some rather colorful leggings and some high heels for the duration of the entire 2 days the festival runs across. This paired with how friendly everyone is made for an amazing atmosphere full of laughter and headbanging.

 

The festival had an amazing line-up this year with Saturday Headliners Collateral on the bill. The other bands are all worth a listen too but my personal favourites include; Bad Earth, Dystopian Sun, Mother Thunder & Stuntface. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend for a few hours on Saturday but here are the bands I did catch.

 

The first act I caught was Edd Case who I was expecting from the name to be a guy in a leather jacket with a big beard. Well, I was right on the beard front however, he was in a bright pink princess dress and bubblegum pink wig! My stepdaughter has aptly named him “pink dress beard guy” and I can’t say she’s wrong. The music was a nice chilled acoustic indie/rock style which was a nice intro whilst we got wristbanded and waited for the main stage to open.

 

Opening the main stage for the day was Dxrk Winter (and yes I spelled it wrong initially!) and for saying it was 2 pm on a Saturday they had some really good crowd participation. Including some sore heads banging along to their heavy sound. They don’t have a bassist but that didn’t stop their sound from shredding into the day and waking everyone up! For saying these guys haven’t been together that long they did an incredible job and kicked the day off to a good start.

 

Next off Victim of Damp outside on the KeyMo Stage. An acoustic solo set. I wasn’t quite expecting what I got when I saw this artist. Non-stop jokes and some well-thought-out songs and references which had me laughing for a solid 20 minutes. Most noticeable were the songs aimed at one of the organizers, Fozzy, Including “Fozzy’s van is full of shit” which I think means he has a very messy van!

 

The last band I managed to catch was Bad Earth. Now these guys aren’t new to me, I’ve been lucky enough to see them a few times. They also definitely are not new to Pentre Fest & Mcleans as a venue – a point made clear by their introduction by Beany (who was in his second t-shirt of the day whilst still in the heels and leggings!). Bad Earth is always an odd one for me as I always feel a bit like I’m watching a band with a similar sound to Clutch then they throw me a curveball and have the odd heavier song – which I of course have a little bop to. They’re always good fun to watch and honestly the nicest blokes!

 

All in all, I would recommend Pentre Fest to anyone. If I could I would’ve stayed all day to catch Stuntface & Collateral and the Bad Earth Acoustic set. It’s really reasonably priced too with a day ticket for Saturday being just £20 for 10 hours of music. They also have a food stall on-site & were giving out free jelly vodka shots at one point (not for the children!).

 

The organisers North East Wales Metal Productions also have another festival later on in the year called N.E.W Metal Fest which is worth checking out!

For all things Pentre Fest, click HERE