This came out in 2003 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
There are countless glam and metal bands whose ridiculous antics and homoerotic machismo will make you laugh out loud. New U.K. darlings The Darkness are one step ahead of them, though — they’re trying to crack you up.
At least, I assume that’s the point of having a guy cavort about in a unitard, shrieking lines like “Get your hands off of my woman, motherf—er!” in a helium-balloon falsetto that only Freddie Mercury can hear — all while a power trio cranks out balls-to-the-wall, pelvis-grinding riffs nicked wholesale from AC/DC’s back catalog. Thankfully, though, and more than a little amazingly, this retro-rawk foursome aren’t just some bunch of Spinal Tap parodists with more authentic accents. Sure, The Darkness’s tongues never stray too far from their cheeks on their colourful 38-minute debut Permission to Land. But most of these 10 tunes — from the grinding Black Shuck to the harmonized-guitar power ballad Love Is Only A Feeling — are way too dumb to be anything short of brilliant. As they deftly strike a near-flawless balance between sly spoofery and spot-on homage to the hard-rocking hedonism and zebra-striped sartorial speldor of ’70s icons like Thin Lizzy, Queen and Sparks, The Darkness prove what Spinal Tap told us all those years ago: There really is a fine line between clever and stupid.
