Andy Warhol’s prediction that one day everyone would be famous for 15 minutes seems cruelly appropriate when I think about English glam rock / metal band the Darkness. In 2003 they released their debut album Permission to Land and for the next year they were huge. The album went platinum and the band racked up three awards – Best British Group, Best British Rock Act and Best British Album – at 2004’s BRIT Awards.
But then… Suddenly, they weren’t huge. Their second album One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back (2005) being a flop and their singer and lead guitarist Justin Hawkins quitting the band after struggling with drug and alcohol addiction didn’t help, though overall they gave the impression their popularity would be brief. With the over-the-top theatricality of their music – crowned by Hawkins’ falsetto vocals – and the cartoonish-ness of their videos and general image, the band obviously didn’t take themselves seriously, which was admirable. Alas, there’s a problem with presenting yourself as something of a joke, i.e., even the funniest joke in the world stops being funny when you’ve heard it a number of times.
For the record, I should say I liked One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back, if only for its title track, which contained the immortal lyrics: “The first line hit me like a kick in the face / Thought I better have another one just in case…” I also liked them because they came from Lowestoft, the rather rough-and-ready seaside resort in County Suffolk. I was spending much of my time in Suffolk when, temporarily, they hit the big time. Indeed, at the height of their celebrity, they threatened to buy big, fancy houses in Southwold, the more upmarket, snootier seaside resort a few miles along the coast from Lowestoft – a threat some Southwolders took seriously. I seem to recall a newspaper article where the journalist visited Southwold and interviewed some locals about the prospect of having Justin Hawkins and co. as residents. One old lady expressed her disapproval of them because they ‘had tattoos’.
However, as evidenced by John Travolta – who went from the highs of Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978) to the lows of the Look Who’s Talking movies (1989-93), but then enjoyed a comeback with Pulp Fiction (1994) – or Robert Downey Jr – who, after Air America (1990) and Chaplin (1992), seemingly destroyed his career with cocaine and heroin abuse, but then made a half-billion dollars playing Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – or even Sir Michael Caine – whose route from Zulu (1964) and Alfie (1966) to having roles in eight Christopher Nolan movies and becoming a British national treasure had to go through a mid-career trough containing the likes of The Swarm (1978), Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), The Island (1980), The Hand (1981) and Jaws: the Revenge (1987) – just because you were once fashionable, but then went out of fashion, doesn’t mean you won’t ever come back into fashion. So it is with the Darkness. After being off the radar for a long time, they’ve lately acquired some retro-coolness.
Their eighth and most recent album, 2025’s Dreams on Toast, got to Number 2 in the British charts. They’re due to support Iron Maiden at their 50th anniversary show at Knebworth Park in July this year. And in December 2026 they’ve lined up no fewer than seven UK arenas to perform in for their Band of Brothers tour. They even generated some headline-making controversy when Justin Hawkins, who reunited with the Darkness in 2011, and younger brother Dan, who plays lead guitar in the band too, criticized Yungblud’s performance at the late Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell concert last summer. The elder Hawkins commented: “…if the future of rock comes from musical theatre and Disney, if this is Ozzy’s heir, we’re in trouble.” Finally, it hasn’t done the band’s renewed popularity any harm that, since 2021, Justin Hawkins has had a YouTube channel where he reviews and analyses songs. It currently has 600,000 subscribers.
Last week, the Darkness made their first-ever appearance in Singapore, my current abode, with a gig at the Capitol Theatre. In terms of musicality, it wasn’t the best concert I’ve attended in the city-state. That accolade probably belongs to Jack White, whom I saw at the same venue three-and-a-half years ago. But in terms of showmanship… This gig was pretty awesome.
Yes, the band-members are two decades older than they were in their mid-noughties heyday – bassist Frankie Poullain, who once resembled a moustached villain from a spaghetti western, appears to have transformed into Kurt Vonnegut – but the encroachment of middle age hasn’t slowed, calmed or subdued them. Justin Hawkins, for example, in an impressive display of spriteliness, performed a handstand at one point. Also, admirably un-self-conscious, he stripped off to the waist early in the gig and flaunted a torso slathered in tattoos. No wonder that old lady in Southwold objected to him.
When you list the bands that had an influence on the Darkness, the one topping the list is surely Queen. Accordingly, there were moments tonight when I felt I was listening to the rockier end of Queen’s musical repertoire – without the detours into opera, funk, disco, music hall, electronica and so on that the older band were so fond of – with Justin Hawkins providing plenty of Freddie Mercury-style flamboyance. But I mean that in a good way. Those Queen-esque moments smacked of loving homage rather than slavish imitation. And on the subject of Queen, I should mention that since 2015 the Darkness’s drummer has been Rufus Tiger Taylor, whose dad is none other than the legendary Queen tub-thumper Roger Taylor. Justin Hawkins cracked a joke about this at one point, quipping that Rufus’s father used to ‘play the drums in Status Quo’. I laughed, though nobody else in the crowd seemed to. Maybe because I was the only audience-member old enough to know who Status Quo were.
The setlist balanced half-a-dozen songs from their first and still most famous album Permission to Land, including such crowd-pleasing items as I Believe in a Thing Called Love and Get Your Hands Off My Woman Motherf*cker, with half-a-dozen from their recent comeback Dreams on Toast. Of the latter songs, Rock and Roll Party Cowboy, which served as the opening number and set the tone for what was to follow, was a particularly glorious slab of glam-metal genius / stupidity (“Leather jacket, no sleeves / Harley-Davidson? Yes, please!“). Some of their in-between albums were represented by a song each and they also did a cover, a guitar-heavy rendition of Jennifer Rush’s The Power of Love (1984), which Hawkins’ voice was highly suited to. The cover was fun, though one ironic take on a power ballad was enough. They thankfully didn’t follow it up with versions of, say, Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart (1983) or Celine Dion’s It’s All Coming Back to Me Now (1996).
The band played epically with instruments cranked up to 11 at all times, Justin Hawkins antics’ as frontman achieved the right alchemy of melodrama and hilarity, and consequently the evening was high in entertainment value and the crowd had an excellent time. What helped, I felt, was that the Darkness came across as being a bunch of genuinely decent lads. For instance, Justin Hawkins showed his appreciation of the guitar-tech guy who sporadically had to run on and off-stage. The band also made sure their touring member, the keyboardist and guitarist Ian Norfolk – who, with his bald head, trimmed beard and sensible clothes looked as unlike the other performers as was possible – got a minute in the limelight. By the way, I appreciate a guy called Norfolk playing with a band from Suffolk.
Moreover, the one moment that could have soured things – the band stopped a half-minute into I Believe in a Thing Called Love to ask certain members of the audience at the front of the stalls to stop filming on their phones – was well-handled by Hawkins. Speaking like the nice, popular teacher at school who, once in a blue moon, has to discipline an unreasonably rowdy class, he pointed out in an I’m-not-angry-just-a-bit-disappointed voice, “Imagine if I sang the song while filming you on my phone… It’d be really boring!” He was more restrained than Brett Anderson of Suede, who in a 2023 gig at Singapore’s Star Theatre reacted to phone-filming spectators by tussling with them and knocking the infernal devices out of their hands.
Incidentally, when I arrived before the show, I noticed that one of the counters selling drinks at the back of the stalls belonged to the Flying V, Singapore’s premiere – well, probably only – heavy-metal bar. And when I approached that counter to buy a beverage, I discovered they were selling Aspall Cyder. The cidery producing this particular brew is located in the Suffolk village of Aspall, about 30 miles southwest of Lowestoft. Wow, I thought, is this on sale because the Darkness are performing tonight? Are they supporting the Suffolk economy whilst playing in Asia? Momentarily, I had a vision of the Darkness’s tour-jet being accompanied by a cargo plane loaded with bottles of East Anglian scrumpy. However, I visited the Flying V after the gig and learnt that they sell Aspall Cyder there all the time. So it was just a coincidence.
