Live Review : Firevolt Festival on August 7th 2026

As it is so common these days, Firevolt Festival starts on the Friday but early arrivals on Thursday are accommodated with a warm greeting and something of a spectacular pre-party. The festival site itself is gorgeous, set in the lush greenery of Etherow Country Park. Where else can you get piers and waterfalls along with your rock music? Campers, glampers, disabled and a small amount of live-in vehicles are accommodated on site, but due to weight and space restrictions on both the site and the single-track road that leads to it general car parking and the rest of the live-ins are banished to a field in the village about a mile and a half away.

Fear not though, as the good people who run this gaff organise a regular shuttle bus to convey your good self and all your gear over to where it needs to be. They will even meet you at the gate and convey you to a suitable pitching spot if you’re a camper, it really is a well-thought-out and first-class service. Once set up you can wander into the arena itself. The outdoor Bludsuker stage dominates one end at the top of a slope, which leads down to the “barn”, location of the second stage and a record-breaking 99ft long bar. On the way you pass numerous food trucks and a couple more bars as well as some traders to help you part with your money.

There are proper toilets and showers, there’s a wine cellar, a spritz boat, a wellness/pamper tent where you can get a massage. The whole thing is set in a valley surrounded by trees, with campers on top of a hill to one side getting a birds-eye view of the whole place. It’s stunning, and also well thought out. On the Thursday you can meet and drink with friends, take part in a quiz, enjoy a couple of low-key live bands (Gorilla Riot and White Tyger this year) and then boogie into the wee small hours to tunes provided by sponsors Radio Wigwam. It’s a gentle, laid back experience for most – just perfect to get you into the festival mood! 

Friday dawns warm and sunny and proceedings are opened by Shape Of Water. Last year there was  a third stage to showcase some new talent, and this band have rightfully been promoted from that as they went down so well. They are a power trio whose music is focussed on a blues sound but also incorporates several other influences. They get a bit of pyro to liven things up as well! There are nods to prog, and some jangly bits that seem to have been inspired by the likes of Big Country. They are big crowd favourites and it’s good to see the opening band get such a healthy audience and well-deserved warm reception. 

Takeaway Thieves are always good fun. After a few false starts they now seem to have settled with the young, glam and cute Josh on bass, and he seems to have help inject a new lease of life into the whole band. The music is bouncy and upbeat, with just a touch of sleaze and swagger. In fact. they may need to change singer Peter’s name to Pouter as he jaggers about the stage in his bare feet and feather-enhanced bandana. It's music to make you smile and dance, and the crowd duly struts along with glee. They play old songs and new ones, and the set is a glorious blur of movement and laughter and provides some solid entertainment to get our teeth into.  

Doomsday Outlaw play more retro blues-based classic rock. There are some tech issues after the first song but they keep us amused with some anecdotes and boogie-woogie piano so nobody loses interest while the sound gets sorted out. Style-wise they lean towards very early Whitesnake, from the days when Jon Lord’s keyboards were a dominant factor. They do throw in some curveballs though, with the country party rock of ‘Drink Myself To Death’ being a highlight that gets the crowd jigging about. They cover Duran Duran’s ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ and they finish with a tune that could easily have dropped off a Foo Fighters album. It’s a happy mash-up of styles and it's all very well done and enjoyable. 

Fireheart are a little harder and heavier but still with lots of melody, particularly with the vocal harmonies which are pretty spectacular. They are still pushing their message that it’s OK to not be OK, and that your mental health and self-confidence matter. It’s a strong theme, and is particularly well showcased in their anthemic song ‘Good Is Good Enough’. The crowd happily sing it back to them, and as they stress the importance of talking and also listening, you can’t help but feeling that this is a band who truly believe in what they are saying. The set is surprisingly slick and commercial for a band that’s fairly new to the scene. We learn that they have a crowdfunder to get the first album recorded, and reader I bought the t-shirt.  

This weekend’s musician who is putting in a double shift is the indomitable AOR vocalist and keyboard player Darren Wharton. Later we will encounter his band Dare, but for today he’s here to give us Renegade, his tribute to Thin Lizzy. Darren was in the band for several years, and obviously holds their music and the late Phil Lynoott close to his heart. The songs are performed to perfection and the set is enhanced significantly by a surprise appearance by Ricky Warwick at the end to sing ‘Boys Are Back in Town’ with them. 

The New Roses, Germany’s answer to Bon Jovi, bounce onto the stage with ‘Addicted to Danger’ and it’s all uphill from there really. They provide us with easy hard rock. There are hummable tunes, singalong choruses and loads of opportunity for the crowd to get involved. The guitars are sharp, the bass pounds while the drums keep the beat and singer Timmy just seems to get better every time we see them. They cover Neil Young’s ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ and somehow manage to make this tired old standard of a song sound fresh and vibrant again. Other highlights are during ‘Glory Road’ when Timmy gets down into the photo pit and greets the crowd individually, and of course final song ‘Down By The River’ with it’s evocative lyrics of a six pack and the radio – the perfect song for a warm summer evening if ever there was one.  

Ricky Warwick of course didn’t just turn up to do one song with Renegade. He too is a man of several hats, cutting his teeth in the punk world of New Model Army then forming the revered and influential The Almighty in the late 1980s. Stints with the revitalised Thin Lizzy in the early 2000s and fronting Lizzy spin-off Black Star Riders as well as a solo career and even a bit of acting have given him a grounded attitude that shines forth when he’s fronting the band named after himself. Ricky Warwick and the Fighting Hearts are solid. Guitarist Ben Christo brings an excessive quiff and a sparkling repertoire to the whole shebang, and helps Ricky throw out a set that dips into most of his solo career. The influences are diverse as is the music, but it’s all held together by Ricky’s powerful voice and somehow it just seems to work. The crowd is enthusiastic although a little smaller than expected, and the whole set goes down very well.  

This is our first time seeing Mason Hill with their new(ish) singer Tom Ward. He joined the band officially towards the end of last year, and they have slowly been coming back out of the hiatus they entered following the departure of their previous singer for health reasons in 2023. Tom’s style is quite different, he leans towards a harder, more metalcore direction and breathes a fresh life into what was already a pretty tight rock band. The guitars still scream, the power chords are still there but the whole thing is somehow a bit heavier, more raw than it used to be. The old songs are still strong, still powerful, but perhaps lack some of the emotion and intimacy that they used to have. That’s only natural though, for lyrics that are sometimes so personal to one person it’s never going to be quite the same when performed by somebody else. This is not a bad thing though, it’s more of a new perspective.

We then get to the new songs, and here is where Tom really comes into his own. These are geared to his slightly harsher style, and to these ears they take the band in a new direction that seems to be very promising indeed. Crowd reactions were mixed. Some people seemed to be muttering that this wasn’t the band they expected if you wanted to party into the wee hours, but the heat of the day and volume of beer consumed meant that many of us headed off to our beds in preparation for the rest of the weekend.   

So that was day one done – well almost. There was still a covers band and rock DJs in the bar.