Chewin' on metal with the Darkness

By Scott Galupo

The trick to being the Darkness is to walk the line of homage and parody. You can't just be Spinal Tap; you have to mean it.
The Darkness means it. Sort of.
The glam-metal revival band from Norfolk, England, is the lord of all buzz right now. It played the 9:30 Club Tuesday to a sellout crowd that partied like it was 1983.
Singer-guitarist Justin Hawkins slipped in and out of successive one-piece leotards, preening and strutting like an amalgam of rock's greatest macho she-men: Mick Jagger, Freddie Mercury, David Lee Roth.
His younger brother, guitarist Dan Hawkins, wore a Thin Lizzy T-shirt. Bassist Frankie Poullain looked like a clone of the late Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott.
The stage backdrop was a truckload of columns lined with giant light bulbs. They might have borrowed the rig from Kiss.
For a blitzkrieg one-hour set, the Darkness played most of its "Permission to Land" album, the elder Mr. Hawkins hitting falsetto notes that have not been heard since Queen's "News of the World" album.
He and brother Dan played a dueling, neck-shredding style of lead guitar that often required a technique called right-hand tapping. It was pioneered, probably, by Queen's Brian May but made famous by Eddie Van Halen.
It didn't take long for the technique to become verboten among serious guitarists. Slash of Guns N' Roses once said he felt embarrassed doing it. However, that was in the late '80s. With help from the Hawkinses, it might just become cool again.
The brave boys of the Darkness, courting ridicule, especially at home in their native England, are on the verge of making a lot of things cool again. The power ballad, for instance. It's OK — in this time of post-rock irony — to like a piece of cheese such as "Love Is Only a Feeling."
In the tradition of such pre-metal bands as Sweet, T. Rex and Uriah Heep, the Darkness plays hard, riff-based rock with bubble-gum melodies and operatic choruses. The titles are bombastic or silly or mock-aggressive: "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," "Get Your Hands Off of My Woman," "Love on the Rocks With No Ice."
The great thing about the Darkness is its lack of pretense. Mr. Hawkins knows he has no prayer of being taken seriously while wearing an open-chested jumpsuit with purple, Godzilla-like twine running down his spine.
He doesn't care. He embraces his inner shtick. People may not be moved by him, but they are pleasantly amused by him. What's wrong with that?
Unlike the Godsmacks and Puddles of Mudd of today's metal scene, unlike the mealy confessionalism of the emo cats, the Darkness is fun.
Does anyone remember fun?
Of course you do. That's why you've scarfed up tickets to see Van Halen this summer.
The Darkness ultimately may be a come-and-go phenomenon. It's perilously close to the edge of nostalgia-peddling novelty. Whether or not it endures, the band will have served an important purpose: It will have made rock safe again for unabashed arena-rock bravura.
And it will have done so by putting the hair back in metal.

From: http://washingtontimes.com/entertainment/20040407-092915-9762r.htm