Review: The Darkness burst on the scene decades ago - but still blew Wolverhampton fans away with The Halls performance
Two decades since The Darkness burst on to the British rock scene, it feels like only now are they starting to get their flowers.
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The release of debut studio album Permission to Land in 2003 was supposed to launch the band into superstardom and they appeared on course for that when they won three Brit awards in 2004.
But a rollercoaster ride since saw them never quite reach those heights and they are to release their latest album Dreams on Toast on independent label Cooking Vinyl at the end of this month - the fourth consecutive record they have put out like this.
With this latest release, though, is coming a whole new appreciation for The Darkness and enigmatic frontman Justin Hawkins, with the hips of Mick Jagger and a legendary falsetto that hits impossibly high notes.
They stopped in at The Halls in Wolverhampton for a sold-out Saturday night of rock and roll, blasting the roof off the place with hits such as I Believe in a Thing Called Love and Love Is Only a Feeling.
While those hits from that 22-year-old debut album got the biggest reactions of the night, this is no nostalgia act.
Hawkins is a man comfortable in his own skin - as he proved by stripping his top half off not once, but twice - and who doesn't try to hide the scars of all those ups and downs from the past two decades.
