“Give me a D!, Give me an Arkness!” bellows out Justin Hawkins and the crowd responds in kind. It is Saturday night and The Darkness are back in town for a sold out show at the Civic Hall, which can only mean that everyone is in for a damn good time. And unlike the last time they were here, at the tail end of 2023 to mark 20 years of Permission to Land, this time around there are plenty of new songs added to the set. Album number eight, Dreams on Toast, isn’t released until the end of the month but they still have the confidence to pepper the show with tunes that are largely unfamiliar to the audience. Predictably, they go down a storm; starting with the good time anthem that is ‘Rock n Roll Party Cowboy’, a song that sounds exactly like you would expect from the title.

There is something about the individuality of each member of The Darkness that makes it all work so well when they come together on stage. He may not have been there at the beginning but Rufus Tiger Taylor simply belongs in this band. Elsewhere, Frankie Poullain remains ice-cool and Dan Hawkins churns out riff after riff, a classic no nonsense guitarist content to leave the showmanship to his sibling. Justin, of course, never fails to deliver; his acrobatics during ‘Get Your Hands Off My Woman’ and being carried into the crowd for ‘Love on the Rocks With No Ice’ are tried and tested concert staples that still impress.

Another new song, the stomping ‘Walking Through Fire’ has him choreographing the audience to march in time during the chorus, he also implores us all to visit the merch stand and pick up a digital copy of the new album for “FIVE ENGLISH POUNDS!”. Apparently, there is a good chance they can reach the top of the charts with Dreams on Toast, although Ariana Grande and Mumford and Sons will be stiff competition. But however the chart battle plays out, songs like ‘The Battle for Gadget Land’ and acoustic ‘Weekend in Rome’ already feel like future Darkness classics. They closed out the main set with ‘Friday Night’ and ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’, two songs that epitomise all that is terrific about this band; as theatrical, grandiose and superb as when you first heard them all those years ago.

They played new songs, they played old songs, and everybody seemed to be having a great time. Twenty – something years down the road, The Darkness remain at the top of their game.

Setlist:-

Rock and Roll Party Cowboy
Growing on Me
Get Your Hands Off My Woman
Mortal Dread
Motorheart
Walking Through Fire
Barbarian
The Battle for Gadget Land
Love Is Only a Feeling
The Longest Kiss
Heart Explodes
My Only
Japanese Prisoner of Love
Friday Night
I Believe in a Thing Called Love

Encore:-
Weekend in Rome
I Hate Myself
Love on the Rocks With No Ice