Hot Cakes
On their first album in seven years, the Darkness trade their singular, self-mocking sleaze for broader, more encouraging sentiments about hanging on to the good times, revealing a slick power-pop band beneath their known love of heavy metal histrionics.
Since first tossing its cartoonish, good-time cock-rock to the masses in the early ’00s, The Darkness has always fallen back on this defense: The band is a joke, but hey, it’s a good joke. With Hot Cakes—the group’s third album, and first since reforming last year—the laughter has died. In its place is the sad wheeze…
The first time I heard The Darkness was in late 2003 while driving along a foggy mountain road in northern Spain.
It's hard to discuss the 2012 album from satiro-hard rock band the Darkness without taking into account how the disc comes on the heels of much anticipation and hardship.
Smut’s always been a core ingredient of The Darkness’s overstretched shtick, but I could swear it used to come with more wit. The glam riff and louche lyrics of third album opener Every Inch of You pick up precisely where they left off, but when the guitars are silenced for a falsetto ‘suck my cooooooock!’, you can’t help but long for the comparatively sophisticated double entendres of past releases.
The Darkness's terrific new album could be the one to propel them back into arenas, writes <strong>Dom Lawson</strong>
The hard rockin' lads from Lowestoft ditch the booze but keep the fun. CD review by Russ Coffey