PHOTOS: RICHIE DOWNS | As we noted earlier this month, Last of Our Kind is the first album in three years for The Darkness. It’s hailed as one of their finest records yet, and a maturation of their sound. “It is the best rock album you will hear this year,” says singer Justin Hawkins. “It is the best rock album you will hear until next time The Darkness makes an album.” It’s difficult to argue for a more appropriate title; they don’t make rock bands like The Darkness anymore.
“We’ve always been a cult band,” bass guitarist Frankie Poullain tells TVD, but that’s quite an over-simplification (and he knows it). It’s been over a dozen years since Permission to Land blasted rock music out of its same-y, neo-garage rut. Its influence punched the genre in the face and reminded people, who were too young to remember, what it was like for rock to be a fun, profane, exhilarating spectacle. With Last of Our Kind, The Darkness again unleash tongue-in-cheek bombastic rock music that delivers in spades and (figurative, possibly literal) pyrotechnics.”
And there we’re both literal and figurative pyrotechnics on display last Sunday evening at the Fillmore Silver Spring. “Growing on Me,” “Black Shuck,” “Mudslide,” “Friday Night,” “Stuck in a Rut,” the monster single “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” and Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” hit like hammers. (Thor’s, to be exact.)
If not the best rock band on the planet, they’re in close orbit. Decide for yourself.
