The Darkness pursued rock stardom in the identical manner that individuals these days attempt to be professional operating backs or music journalists: headlong, and with out care for a way the place is presently valued. As East Anglian youngsters within the early ’90s—with alt-rock and saggy Madchester in industrial ascendance—brothers Dan and Justin Hawkins had been obsessive about the heavy acts of their childhoods. They pored over Brian Might’s guitar tone, Aerosmith’s album sequencing (all the time shut with an influence ballad), and the right design of catsuits. Dan reduce his tooth taking part in outmoded kinds like thrash metallic and prog, shifting from drums to bass when he joined Justin’s covers band. It was a part-time gig for Justin; in 1997 he had began a enterprise composing soundalikes for commercials: tunes that might recommend their sources with out being legally actionable. It was this work that bankrolled the recording of the Darkness’ 2003 debut, Permission to Land: a defiantly retro set of glammy, cheeky exhausting rock that briefly made the band the toast of UK pop.
On the flip of the twenty first century, there was no scarcity of acts mining musical comedy from the identical rocks because the Darkness. In England, the band was preceded by the self-mythologizing Wildhearts, who combined an omnivorous ‘60s pop sensibility with buzzsaw rock‘n’roll. Scandinavia boasted punked-up glam from the likes of the Hives, Yard Infants, and Turbonegro. America had Satanicide (a scraggly-wigged, dwell hair-metal act for NY hipsters), Tenacious D (the absurdist pomp-rock duo of Kyle Gass and Jack Black), and Metal Panther (a world competition draw that rendered the cock-rock deathstyle with grim constancy). However the Darkness had been distinguished by their ambition. In sound and bearing, they introduced as chart royalty; they had been dedicated to the bit on a mobile degree. They took rock-as-form very significantly, which freed them to be frivolous all over the place else.
Roughly timed to the twentieth anniversary of the album’s US launch, Permission to Land… Once more doesn’t complicate the legacy of the Darkness. As an alternative, it honors it by offering extra: extra twin-guitar flash, extra careening falsetto, extra high-concept rockers. From the start, The Darkness walked a tightrope between the twin skyscrapers of Queen and AC/DC. At one finish, haughty but humane grandeur; on the different, snarling, cranked-up minimalism. Troublesome sufficient work, however the true highwire act had been the faces the band pulled alongside the road. The Darkness by no means totally embraced the comedy-rock label; being wiseasses simply got here naturally. Like a Kerrang!-approved Sparks, they spliced surging glam rock and energy ballads with lyrics about jerking off and the existential unfairness of contracting an STI. Even when the texts weren’t particularly intelligent, their deployment usually was.
