An outline of the probable thought process of anyone listening to The Darkness’ Permission to Land for the first time: All right, nice riff. Could be White Stripes. Ooh, pounding drums. Hell yeah! This rocks!
Yes, this is some kind of joke. This is The Darkness. And that is the hellacious falsetto of singer Justin Hawkins.
Blowing their noses on any laws of probability, The Darkness managed to keep its debut album on top of the British chart for twelve weeks, and now it has set its sights on America, hoping to reach devout Anglophiles, people who buy any record with a naked woman on the cover and anyone else with a senseof adventure.
Let’s not kid ourselves: The Darkness is hair metal. You know, that stuff that Nirvana firmly nailed in its coffin?
Justin Hawkins is rarely seen out of his leopard-print unitard, and brother/guitarist Dan Hawkins is rarely seen without his Thin Lizzy t-shirt.
Bassist Frankie Poullain sports a scarf around his head and a handlebar moustache.
The cover of the album has not only a naked woman, but also a spaceship.
But, strangely, you’re as likely to enjoy The Darkness if you think that hair metal is the worst product of the 1980s as you are if you’re one of those people who sings along to “Living on a Prayer” at the Boot every night.
It’s highly improbable that anyone without some kind of idea about what he or she is getting into is going to buy “Permission to Land”, but opener “Black Shuck” ensures that even those with preconceived notions will have their jaws dropped.
It rocks harder than any album opener in recent memory, but the heavy riff is overshadowed by Hawkins’ ridiculous singing in unholy octaves about a Grendel-like beast terrorizing a town.
The next track, and lead single, “Get Your Hands Off My Woman,” will convert unbelievers, and it boasts the most melodic vulgarity of any song ever.
Rounding out the opening salvo is the second single, “Growing On Me,” with a bawdy subtext so thinly veiled, only someone who’s gone to Catholic school for too long wouldn’t get it, and an admittedly great “power ballad” entitled “I Believe In a Thing Called Love.”
The rest of “Permission to Land” can’t quite live up to its first half-it’s laden with ballads, and a couple of them are not so great-but the quality never drops below four-star.
“Givin’ Up” is a rocker so obviously about heroin, you’re sure it can’t possibly actually be about heroin.
“Friday Night” is a clever “school days” ditty that bullies The White Stripes’ “We’re Going to Be Friends.”
“Holding My Own” is a hymnal of a romantic ballad about “holding your own.”
And it’s always nice when an album ends in less than forty minutes.
Like Spinal Tap, The Darkness never winks at its audience, so to enjoy the band, we are essentially forced to shove Hawkins’ tongue into his cheek.
But where Spinal Tap wrote funny songs in a genre that was popular at the time, The Darkness writes great pop songs (pop in the sense that The Beatles or Radiohead are pop), but play them in a genre that’s been out of style so long it’s funny.
And The Darkness will rock your face off. This is what metal is all about: goofy mythological/sexual lyrics, twin guitar solos and the most over-the-top vocals in history.
The hilarity of it all is rivaled only by the righteousness!
