Label: Cooking Vinyl
Release date: 3/28/2025
Producer: Dan Hawkins
Album length: 33:05 min
Genre: Rock’N’Roll / Hard Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
The Darkness love picking ‘crunchy’ titles for their albums. Just think of the comeback record “Hot Cakes” from 2012. And with their eighth album, the band stays unbelievably fresh and crunchy. Next to the many in the rock’n’roll scene who can at best spread butter on plain bread, they’re a proper, honest-to-goodness slab of well-done toast.
The quartet is basically stuck with a pretty thankless fact. Every band carries its own cross, and The Darkness are no different. Every The Darkness album released after the huge commercial success of the debut “Permission To Land” (2003), confirmed by its follow-up “One Way Ticket To Hell… and Back” (2006), is one that the (not necessarily their) audience, who still know every hit from those two records by heart, just won’t buy anymore. Even though every later album has a whole sack of songs made for evergreen hit-single status. But that’s how it goes. Even the second album would have done way better commercially if it had come out right after the debut, so in 2004 at the earliest. But let’s call it quits with the ‘ifs’ in this essay, because the new The Darkness album is a brilliant union of top-notch rock ferocity and fun-loving tomfoolery, which stays the band’s faithful companion in 2025 too!
The new album “Dreams On Toast” is a bit late after its predecessor “Motorheart”, which came out three years ago, but then everything runs late one way or another, tours first and foremost. The plandemic did its thing. But this is an excellent album, a real gem of prime British sarcasm and parody. Once again The Darkness dip into the quota of elementary rock’n’roll phrases and pull off an extremely deft recycling job, where those timeless riffs hit with instant predatory force all over again. Jokers who are hard to match. Even though Justin Hawkins turned fifty this March, his plans in these new times are of a completely different nature than minding the grandkids at home. Proof of that is the superb opening rock detonator Rock’N’Roll Party Cowboy, which simply has to find its place in the setlist of the band’s upcoming tours.
The band stays loyal to drawing inspiration from the immortal essence of seventies rock’n’roll, which gets them a brilliant, one-of-a-kind blend of artistry that at moments leans a bit Thin Lizzy, a bit AC/DC (Mortal Dread), and quite often very, very Queen (especially evident on the country joker Hot On My Tail and/or the cabaret jabber The Longest Kiss), with the band’s feel for the plasma of musical infectiousness so cocky (and at the same time brimming with humor) that the associations can fire you all the way back to the era of ‘bubblegum pop’ rock.
The Darkness get straight to the point this time too. The new album runs a mere 33 minutes. It brings 10 polished tracks that don’t waste a single second of playing time. And that’s the heart of every album you can then tack the adjective ‘good’ onto. The Darkness know this very well. I Hate Myself is a track that would be a huge hit today if it had landed on the debut, 22 years earlier. It rides on a ‘worn-out’ rock’n’roll riff, but it’s repackaged and served up so damn cleverly that its punch ‘kills’ on the spot. Dan Hawkins is at times extremely feisty and corrosive with his riffage (The Battle for Gadget Land), while the album is also deftly ‘balanced’, among other things with wickedly parodic excursions into country / honky tonk waters, as Cold Heart Woman shows.
The band never runs out of sharpness. And they’re very rational about it. No extravagance, no waste. So “Dreams On Toast” can be called a brilliant shrapnel of rock’n’roll that you’ll happily keep on repeat. Everything on it is picked so rationally that the album keeps you glued from start to finish! After the onslaught of blaring decibel release that is Walking Through Fire, where Justin once again slyly goofs and grimaces vocally, reviving the point of the band’s debut, comes the closing album ‘burlesque’ with a cinematic exit, Weekend In Rome. But you absolutely have to listen to the album while following the lyrics too. That’s when it’ll grab you fully and convince you just how uniquely lucid Justin Hawkins’s mind is, and on that front too he remains the driving force of the band.
“Dreams On Toast” is another phenomenal achievement from incorrigible rock’n’roll clowns, full of swaggering cheekiness and everything a fan of this band could possibly wish for. The Darkness remain potent and piercing, concise and outspoken entertainers, and next to many rock bands made of soft breadcrumbs, a true synonym for a concrete slab of overdone rock’n’roll toast!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Rock’N’Roll Party Cowboy
2. I Hate Myself
3. Hot on My Tail
4. Mortal Dread
5. Don’t Need Sunshine
6. The Longest Kiss
7. The Battle for Gadget Land
8. Cold Hearted Woman
9. Walking Through Fire
10. Weekend In Rome
Lineup:
Justin Hawkins – lead vocals, guitar, piano
Dan Hawkins – guitar, backing vocals
Frankie Poullain – bass guitar, backing vocals
Rufus Tiger Taylor – drums, backing vocals
Guest appearance:
Stephen Dorff – monologue on track 10
