The Darkness
British rockers mix glam excesses with musings on Multiverse Theory
“THE DARKNESS are a UK rock band currently eking out an existence on the periphery of the world music scene. Surrounded by a team of highly paid professional technicians, our heroes battle irrelevance in obscurity, paying themselves a meagre minimum wage so as to keep it real.
“The Darkness’ live performances have become legendary. Or mythological.
The absence of an official live DVD means you have to witness a show first hand before you are entitled to slag it off. Then, and only then, may you slag it off. I wager you won’t, because the Darkness will make you sh*t in your pants, in a good way.
I should know. I’m the singer… Justin Hawkins.”
Despite the above, the Lowestoft hard rock, glam metal quartet have been garlanded numerous times since the band was founded in 2000 by the Hawkins brothers, Justin and Dan.
Some of the minor accolades include an Ivor Novello, three Brits, four Kerrang Awards, several Pop Factory Awards, two MTV Music Awards, and a Metal Hammer Golden God - Classic Rock Award; but the most enduring are Justin’s Student of the Year 1991, and a third place in a fantasy miniature painting competition at Lowestoft Model Fair in 1989.
You can see where we are coming from here… although The Darkness can be considered a little tongue in cheek, not taking themselves too seriously and a ‘one hit wonder’, they are a talented group of musicians who enjoy making good music and having fun.
Until recently I subscribed to the ‘one hit wonder’ - albeit an absolute belter – theory, that was until their latest release, Easter is Cancelled came to my attention.
Despite spending my younger, formative years as a ‘metalhead’, I must admit that these days the majority of heavy metal/rock gets on my pip, so when researching who next to feature in CBLive it was with some trepidation and also, dare I say, a certain amount of condescension that I gave the album a listen.
I did this on the premise that I could not say The Darkness are not worth writing about, a) because I don’t like their music and b) the album will be instantly disposable.
It is difficult to write a CBLive about a band/performer/genre you are not overly keen on… to say the least. What is one person’s Beethoven is another’s sound of fingernails scraping down a blackboard.
You can imagine my surprise when the first bars of the Easter is Cancelled opener Rock and Roll Deserves to Die drifted through my headphones.
Its bucolic introduction led me to believe that Hayward the elder had been reborn as Jimmy Page and as the track went on and the tempo became more upbeat I could have sworn blind Ronnie James Dio had himself been reincarnated.
On top of this, the band sounded as tight as (add any jaded old rock and roll cliché), but most importantly the track and what followed thereafter was consummately listenable and extremely enjoyable in a turn it up loud and cruising along the highway, roof down, car full of mates on a jolly kind of way.
Essentially it is a breath of fresh air.
So what is the band’s take on Easter is Cancelled?
“We live in crazed times. The world is going to hell in a fossil fuel-burning handcart. Political and personal turmoil rule. Modern technology is exposing us for the barbarians we are. Rock’n’roll teeters on the edge of extinction, vainly waiting for a band to issue the clarion call to save it.
“But what if there’s a parallel universe where none of that is happening? One where, 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ used his super-powers to break free of his cross and change the course of everything? One where the arseclowns didn’t end up running the show? One where that doomed romance didn’t fail? One where rock’n’roll lives forever?”
That is the question The Darkness pose with this, their sixth studio album, which they describe as: “The greatest quasi-sci-fi-concept opus about an alternate reality superhero Jesus, the dissolution of love, and the death and resurrection of rock’n’roll you’ll hear this year or any other.”
“We had one mission on this album,” says singer and guitarist Justin Hawkins. “Go big or go home. Musically, lyrically, everything. So we went big. Very big. As big as we possibly could.”
Despite their undoubted influences and the prevalence of concept albums during the glam/heavy rock golden days, this is the band’s first release with an underlying storyline running through it.
“We’ve been thinking about doing a concept album for a while,” says bassist Frankie Poullain. “Or a musical. This has elements of both. It has a sense of the exaggerated, which all Darkness material has. But there’s also a real emotion to it.”
The idea at the centre of Easter Is Cancelled is the Multiverse Theory – the mindbending concept that there are an infinite number of parallel universes, and that every single thing that could happen has happened or is happening somewhere in one of them. It runs through the lyrics of the 10 songs, offering up an alternate reality where things are turning out very differently.
“I love Multiverse Theory,” says Justin. “I’m comforted by the possibility of anything and everything happening. So there’s an inverse universe where Jesus has used his superpowers to fight back. And if you ever address the impact of any sort of event in your own life, you must be considering what happened if that hadn’t been the case, just by definition. That could be something you did, something you said, or someone you fell in or out of love with.”
All I can say is give the album a listen, for me it is a real treat and not something that I would usually invest too much time in.
In a closing call to arms Justin Hawkins says: “I think our continued existence pisses some people off, that makes me happy. But pissing people off isn’t why we’re here. We’re here because rock’n’roll needs to step up. And we’re the ones making sure it does.”
Tongue in cheek, a true battle cry or a bit of both, who knows and who really cares when you have just produced a modern rock classic such as Easter is Cancelled.
Give it a listen, I dare you, and if you like what you hear then get along to Sala Gamma in Murcia on January 31.