The Last Word on the Darkness hopefully

The Darkness are a pop band who use the language of metal, perhaps?

I don't understand reviews that lay down the law on the correct way to sing 'fuck' -- is this a new critical method?

they probably have girlfriends at home named Kate or Zoe who got them on all those magazine covers in the first place

I'm trying to think of Real Bands who don't Play the Game here, or have like middle class named girlfriends... um?

that review rocked so hard. i feel like i've just listened to ac/dc. the darkness must go away, obviously.

sonny.

i've been forwarding that review all morning. it's the equivalent of ian astbury's BABY BABY BABYs on electric.

nick, what's it like having to speak out of your arse all the time? must get difficult and sad.

sonny

Huh? Sad guy. Is there a charity set up where you can go and get help?

it's obvious that small town pregnant teens are harvesting the next breed of stripper girlfriends for metal bands!!!

enrique, go to a rural town where some of these metallers are trying to get famous. no smirk to be found!!! dave q you should star in the next decline and fall of western civilisation. what happened to 'logan' - that one band, where the senior and the stripper were chanting their name. the query being - does dave q find these metal bands truly good and interesting or ironic?

insane? it's called being interesting, nick. something you won't know anything about, obviously. but that is 'o.k.'

White American Surburban People? - the fact that you felt the need to quantify/qualify what i said - ends the argument for me.

A small town like Lowestoft? I'm talking UK here. I've never met a person who really really took metal (or 'gangsta rap') seriously.

(ps Nick - yer lack of imagination bogs you down - that's 'o.k'

every metal guy belong in a 'say you love satan' band or gang.

I've never met these people, but also that wave of metal was what? 20 years ago? I'm talking pop fans (= teenagers, primarily) in the nineties/nowties.

Ned, it is important. There's a whole 10 years generation out there who don't know nuffink about guitar solos, falsetto screams, long hair etc. All they have is over grown teenage men in baggy pants whining about how their parents never gave them enough money, or whatever.
If all you expect is a stylistic anachronism from the Darkness, then you are missing the point. All you are doing is laughing at the cheesiness of it all, as if the whole thing's a pantomime, and I personally believe there's more to the Darkness than that. Sure, there's a little irony, but as another thread said - every band is a comedy band. From the early nineties onward, we have been used to taking our music so seriously. Can you imagine "groove is in the heart" or "tricky disco" getting in the charts now? no because they take the piss too much - they aren't proper, even for pop. but they are still good fun songs. same as the darkness's output. the whole album (apart from friday night, and the last track) is rock'n'roll indulgence at it's best. maybe not metal, but certainly a lot of fun.

I draw parallels with hiphop here. Nu-Metal = the dark days of hiphop in the mid nineties. It looks like the Darkness may be the ignition toward something newer and better, so long as we don't get tons of Darkness rip-off bands, which would be, admittedly tedious.

Metal is about escapism - does it really matter about where you're from? As far as anyone's concerned, the darkness could be from the planet Rockon. Whether they come from London or not I don't care, they can't help that.

agreed. the marvellous 'friday night' always made me think that the Hawkins brothers might probably more at home practicing their guitar poses or playing dungeons & dragons than scoring supermodels at aftershows or some such; more Brian May than Tommy Lee.

The songwriting, particularly with respect to chord progressions and riffs, is MUCH more complicated with GNR than it is for Nirvana. Also, Kurt's guitar effects are much messier and less crisp than Slash's guitar effects AND point me at the Nirvana song that contains a guitar solo with a note duration shorter than an eighth note.

You might as well say "Well, Palestrina and Webern aren't that different," or "Scooter and Plastikman aren't that different." All you're doing is showing off your ignorance/inability to distinguish one sound from another.

I can't be bothered to read this thread in its entirety. Is it as good as the one we hijacked with Techno Roy Keane impressions?

anyway, i have thus returned to my true self, to get the c.i.a. off my back.

ironically, much of The Darkness's first huge groundswell of support came from their gigs supporting Def Leppard earlier this year, people who do have metal heritage...

Oh please. We KNOW why, Tico said as much on his cassette thread! He likes the showmanship, the audacity, the tunes, etc. Some of us are coming along and saying, in various ways and means, "You know, here's a bunch of other stuff like them that they obviously like in turn which you might like as well," and you're doing your damnedest to avoid the obvious conclusion that if something gives you joy something else along the same lines might also give you joy. Which makes sense if you're a Puritan, but I rather hope you're not.

Xpost with Stevie just now! For fuck's sake, I said on the other thread that if you liked the Darkness you might well LURV Def Leppard. So get off yer damned high horse and download "Photograph" or "Pour Some Sugar on Me" or "Hysteria" or "Rocket." You might find you actually like the fucking things! And if you hate 'em and prefer the Darkness, that's cool too.

dude, i loved Def Leppard; they're recent stuff has been draedful though. and i loved Queen, too, but The Miracle was the last album they made that had anything i even vaguely loved. for me, The Darkness tickle the spots those bands used to reach.

There's a whole 10 years generation out there who don't know nuffink about guitar solos, falsetto screams, long hair etc.

So Dog Latin, you're saying that an entire generation down to the last person never watches 'where are they now?' programs, never hears oldies radio, doesn't stumble across websites, have no older brothers and sisters with old videotapes of things, etc. This makes about as much sense as me getting into music in the eighties and somehow never hearing about Led Zeppelin or make-up era Kiss.

I understand the rhetorical point you're trying to make and why you're making it, and I see your [and Tom's and Enrique's] huge 'you can't be RATIONAL about it' argument. But jeez louise, the amount of po-faced argument y'all are making *in support* of the Darkness is really head-scratching.

this reminds me of the melody maker, where we were told we couldn't refer to artists who existed before 1990 because 'the kids' didn;t care about them and wouldn't know who they were (this was 1997)... which was bullscrap, since the teenagers i knew and loved back then were deep in to 1960s psyche and funk and spent all weekend high at rare groove and retro clubs dancing till they bled.

we made the references anyway, but often the subs would blunder in... had a reference to Isaac Hayes changed to Barry White once (this was pre-South Park, obv)...

New single debuted in the UK at #6 and got them on Top of the Pops, album debuted at #2 in the UK and top 20 in the US, all very good numbers. Sorry, that's not going to fly.

OTFuckingM. In my case about six months back in 1988.

Look, what Dave Q is saying in his (scabrously funny) article is what I've been saying as well the last couple of days -- namely, if you like the Darkness
you'll probably REALLY love (x, y, z, any list of bands and songs).

Name ONE Iron Maiden chart hit in the US.

i thought that was the whole point! Nobody's going to sit listening to the Darkness going "Oh ya, how futuristic!". Even a six year old would know that and so do the darkness. it's a bit of a revival and as with all revivals they're not always as good as the real thing. The Darkness have made 1 album and Iron Maiden have a zillion and 3 on last count, so of course Def Leppard and Iron Maiden are going to sound better, what with Pyromania being the biggest selling album evah or whatevah.
Then again I could diss Iron Maiden and Def Leppard as false metal pussies, saying that they rip-off Judas Priest et al, but I won't.

Oh go on

Hold on, this is an assumption on your part. Why couldn't the Darkness be better than the 'real' thing? It all comes down to the individual listener.

Did most of that neverending thread just fall out of your head or something?

Yeah, those first few Subway Sect singles rock my motherfuckin' world. Oh you mean Jean-Luc? Fuck that gaseous old fraud.

I probably wd enjoy it, but... what can you do? It's a shallow world. I get pissed off that Tarantino fans don't know their Godard.

Yes but -- compare how much relative time/effort it takes to scare up five specific films to watch all the way through vs. how long it takes to download and listen to, say, five three-minute songs. Your philosophical point is taken but In This Modern World, the ability to find out more and more immediately for this specific medium is child's play. So since you probably *would* enjoy it, off ya go. Set some stuff to download while you listen to the Darkness album again if you like and then check back!

(Actually he doesn't, because the only person who bothered to base his opinion on the actual film was Girolamo, so never mind.)

Did most of that neverending thread just fall out of your head or something?

Hell yeah! I'm not doing this for posterity. I'm trying to work out how I feel. My actual writing process is Kubrickian-Flaubertian [only deeply, deeply middlebrow]. This is fun!

I was anti-Kill Bill and pro-Darkness. I'm just being contrary.

Ah well, then see if Jel on that C90 thread will make you a copy of what he's making Tom. There are always ways!

See, when you check that thread very casually while on vacation, you forget who hated what.

WISE WORDS.