2003 gave birth to one of the most extraordinary and best loved rock bands. The Darkness released their debut album Permission To Land to overnight success, topping the UK charts, going 5x Platinum and selling over 1.5 milion copies in the UK alone. It spawned a series of hit singles including “I Believe In A Thing Called Love,” “Growing On Me,” “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” and “Love Is Only A Feeling.” The album clocked up a series of awards including three BRIT Awards, two Kerrang Awards and an Ivor Novello for Songwriters Of The Year, amongst many others.
The Darkness played a number of landmark shows, including a headline set at the 2004 Reading and Leeds Festivals, as part of a whirlwind career of global touring as international sensations. The band then built upon the success of their debut with their 2005 follow up One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back, which produced the Top 10 hit “One Way Ticket.”
In 2006 Justin Hawkins left the band, checking into rehab and The Darkness fell apart. Following successful treatment, the band reformed in 2011 touring Europe and South America in 2012 with Lady Gaga. The band released their comeback album Hot Cakes that year and Last Of Our Kind in 2015.
In 2016 “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” was featured in a wildly popular Apple Music commercial starring Taylor Swift.
The Darkness have now returned in 2017 with Pinewood Smile, delivering some of the most sharp-witted, infectious, humorous and downright brilliant songs of their career.
Ahead of the album’s announcement, The Darkness toured Europe in support of Guns N’ Roses.
Addressing Pinewood Smile and The Darkness’ undoubted relevance in 2017, Justin Hawkins asks, somewhat rhetorically of the world at large, “Why should anybody care? Because if you don't, we're fucked!! History will remember us as the apathetic generation who negligently ushered in a dreadful dystopian age that may or may not come to be known as The Rise of the Arseclowns. We cannot allow this to continue! You may not give a shit about Brexit or Trump, but PLEASE... give a shit about The Darkness otherwise the last bastion of cultural sensibility will fall and our airwaves will be polluted by meaningless pop purveyed by arseholes and morons... Oh wait!”
