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The Darkness: Permission to land

25/02/09 || theProphet

The Darkness! Yeah! Anybody remember these fuckers? I didn’t until like a week ago when I sorted through some old paper clippings at home and found an old review of their debut, “Permission to Land”. Now, after being forced to review god-awful “extreme” metal for the last couple of months, I felt pretty fucking compelled to delve deeper into this suddenly renewed interest, therefore, I’m gonna review me some good ol’ rock n’ roll that’s actually not ol’ at all, just good. Some of the time.

If you happened to miss out back when these poofs had their fifteen minutes, The Darkness was a pretty unlikely success story, their image was heavy metal-homo to the point that it would have made Rob Halford blush. We’re talking pants that was so tight that they had to be sprayed on, resulting in ridiculously conspicuous cock-bulges. They had scarves, feathers, bandannas and the bass player even had a fucking handlebar mustache! Add to this that they were incredibly fond of long, poncy guitar solos and their singer sounded like a cross between Freddie Mercury and Axl Rose juiced on copious amounts of estrogen.

But call me a jizzgulping fairy, because “Permission to Land” features some of the best rock songs I’ve heard. The albums starts of strong with “Black Shuck”, which features an opening riff that could have been written by AC/DC. Justin Hawkins, let’s face it, has a nice set of pipes despite the fact that he’s hard to take seriously with his outrageous falsettos (then again, The Darkness was probably never meant to be taken seriously in the first place) and “Black Shuck” has some pretty sweet vocal melodies.

Next up is “Get your Hands off my Woman”, with its awesome chorus, and then it’s time for the real winners on this here album. The three following tracks, “Growing on me”, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” and “Love is Only a Feeling” were I think, all singles since I recall seeing their videos on MTV. Anyways, these songs features not only some horrible fucking song-titles, but also some quite delicious riffs, licks and soloing. If Guitar Hero had existed back in 2004, these three songs would suffice as the entire tracklist of that game.

The production is good too, it sounds very modern which helps to give the songs a certain punch and everything is of course crystal clear. This album was never for the Norwegian forests, anyways. It certainly fits this type of 21st century sounding, metalized rock n’ roll though, that’s fo damn sure!

Anyways, after the first five songs the quality takes a dip and the rest of the album is bland and weak, not at all the awesome party music of the album’s first half. I never bothered to check out their follow-up, because seriously, who the fuck cared about The Darkness in late 2005, but I remember seeing that it got some pretty bad reviews. If that album consisted of songs with the same quality as “Givin’ Up”, I understand it.

The first half of “Permission to Land” gets 8 bulging boners out of 10. The album as a whole gets 6 premature ejaculations out of 10.

Information
Released: 2004
Label: Atlantic Records
Website: Unofficial The Darkness MySpace
Band
Justin Hawkins: vocals, lead guitars
Dan Hawkins: guitars, backup vocals
Frankie Poullain: bass, backup vocals
Ed Graham: drums

Tracklist
01. Black Shuck
02. Get Your Hands Off My Woman
03. Growing on Me
04. I Believe in a Thing Called Love
05. Love Is Only a Feeling
06. Givin’ Up
07. Stuck in a Rut
08. Friday Night
09. Love on the Rocks With No Ice
10. Holding My Own

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