Location: Vienna (Wien) / Arena / Austria
Date: Thursday, 14.03.2013
The Darkness, the lost-and-found champions of rock ‘n’ roll excess, blazed in like a meteorite in 2003 onto the planetary scene of the hottest bands in the galaxy, and their unforgettable singles “I Believe In A Thing Called Love,” “Growing On Me,” “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” and “Love Is Only A Feeling” were spinning everywhere, all from the by now legendary debut “Permssion To Land.” The meteorite blew apart in 2006, when The Darkness were at their peak with the second album “One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back” (2005), because the band succumbed to the debauched lifestyle that sneaks into your life one way or another once you become a star. The Darkness split in two. The band’s main engine Justin Hawkins, after successful rehab, spent the time until the reunion on his band Hot Leg, while the remaining trio played in Stone Gods.
It’s clear there’s no The Darkness without the Hawkins brothers. The wheel of fortune turned the right way, and about two years ago the reunited The Darkness announced their first gig dates. Last August they released their third studio album, “Hot Cakes,” played festival stages and even carried their name to Lady Ga Ga’s fans, opening shows on her tour. And finally we got a new headlining tour of their own, which, with a stop in Vienna on 14.03.2013, came close enough to the Slovenian border for a trip to see The Darkness to make sense for the RockLine crew too.
The show had been sold out for quite a while. The same promoter organized a The Darkness concert at the Gasometer seven years ago, at a venue that holds three times as many people as the neighboring Arena. He sensed The Darkness weren’t as hot anymore, so he didn’t take the risk on his shoulders and rather booked a small, cheaper location and sold it out, even if that left a lot of angry fans outside the hall with no tickets.
At exactly eight o’clock the support act took the stage. An excellent choice. More than a fitting choice. Ginger Wildheart Band. A group led by Ginger Wildheart, best known for his long-running defiance with The Wildhearts, who first got noticed as a member of Quireboys. A few years ago the man also joined Hanoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe for a short while for his solo tour and the album “Sensory Overdrive” (2011). Not long ago he also launched the Hey! Hello! project, a kind of experimental, even progressive noisy pop adventure in eclecticism, in collaboration with singer Vctoria Liedke, with Ginger playing every instrument in it, drums included. His backing crew fired off no fewer than four songs from the Hey! Hello! project live: Swimwear, Lock for Rock (and Other Sporting Cliches), How I Survived the Punk Wars and Feral Days. A contentwise eclectic mix of hard rock, punk, even rockabilly, plus excursions into symphonic waters, all dripping with glam juiciness, made for an outstanding warm-up. Firing with everything they had, the solid hard rock grip of no fewer than three guitars, Ginger’s vocals harmonized brilliantly by every member of the backing band. Incredible dynamics and explosiveness. Naughty Ginger proved with his set that it would be hard to find a more fitting support act for a The Darkness gig than his own band. Ginger Wildheart Band closed by giving the crowd The Queen of Leaving from the Silver Ginger 5 project and wrapped up the three-quarter-hour stint with the The Wildhearts classic Do the Channel Bop.
Fifteen minutes past nine in the evening, the Thin Lizzy classic The Boys Are Back In Town is spinning. In the last third of the song, four silhouettes appear on the stage, which is still dark! Hands raised in the air, holding each other’s hands. The Darkness. The hall is on its feet! An explosion into the new Every Inch Of You, and the quartet scatters across the spacious stage at full swing. Dan far left, Frankie far right, which leaves plenty of room in the middle of the stage for the eccentric Justin. The man who has brought a lot of schoolbook hours of imitating His Majesty Freddie Mercury into his stage-excess theater is provocative in every respect once again. From the skin-tight scrap of fabric covering his bare, bony body “crowned” with piercings and tattoos, to the moves, gestures, grimacing quips and facial expressions,….
Seven years have passed since we saw The Darkness at the Gasometer, and Justin may have calmed down by a millimeter. May have, I say. His face is now adorned with a “Cankar-style” mustache, with the ends curled upward. But he’s still nuts. Positively nuts. With all the gymnastics, which included a headstand, climbing up the speakers, rubbing the poor Gibson Les Paul against the left cluster of speakers hung from the hall’s ceiling, theatrical wriggling and striking every possible pose, lie and position, this whole staged shtick of Justin’s act is justified and thoroughly credible, because Justin’s vocals are in top form. Just like in 2006. A few times he literally stunned us with the extreme heights his vocal registers can reach. And Justin doesn’t fade throughout the set. That’s the most important thing. He shows no wear whatsoever. This was also proven by the inclusion of the vocally monstrously demanding Radiohead cover Street Spirit in the encore, and by the damn superior “N.W.O.B.H.M.” version that The Darkness perform.
The Viennese crowd showed that The Darkness are far from forgotten. Mostly it was young rock-culture fans who came to the show, which is a good sign for the band, since it predicts longevity. As expected, the repertoire included the most notorious moments from the albums “Permission To Land” and “One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back,” with newer “Hot Cakes” songs mixed in. The crowd went wilder above all for the older hits, and the roof practically came off the Vienna Arena when the band, after an extremely lucid parody of drummer Ed (She’s Just a Girl, Eddie), launched into One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back, as well as in the closing hook of the regular set that we all feverishly awaited in the hall, I Believe In A Thing Called Love.
There seemed to be no end to the teasing from the eccentric Justin. In the encore, a “little white candy” flew onto the stage. “Damn!” “Is that ecstasy?” “Did it help with the tool between the legs?” “It’s a drug!?” “It’s a drug, isn’t it!?!” Justin wondered out loud, theatrically swallowing the “pill,” then starting to strip and, like a born actor, realizing “in pain”: “Ahhh… It’s worms, bloody worrrrmssss….”
True, next to Justin’s giant ego the remaining trio was once again condemned to the role of extras, but they showed what excellent musicians Ed, Frankie and Dan are. The latter in particular is an important cog, whose work masks Justin’s slip-ups – they happen all through the show, since the man does a whole heap of things on stage besides playing guitar. At the same time, Dan impressed with some beautifully laid-down, classically built hard rock solos and proved he is no slouch at guitar compared to his notorious brother. The Darkness are an erogenous presence on stage! Naughty Justin, mischievous to the core, theatrically mounted one of the well-“reinforced shoulder rings” of the most handy sound tech in the closing Love On the Rox With No Ice. The tech then carried him on his shoulders through the floor. Justin soloed and soloed and soloed on those shoulders. Into all this solo madness swirling around the sweat-soaked, beer-drenched Arena, he lucidly (how else) wove the main theme of Steve Stevens’ Top Gun Anthem.
Once again it was one of those gigs that leave you gaping in post-show afterglow for days. Justin and the band don’t let you catch your breath for a second while you share the live magic with them. The Darkness remain sickeningly good. Like the most sinful gingerbread men of the sharp rock razor, they fire with everything they’ve got in a blaze of extraordinary voltage eruption whenever it’s time to hit the stage. Even though the band has aged seven years since its last visit to Vienna, you couldn’t feel that for a second. Multi-instrumentalist Justin left the piano at home for the new tour, and the gig spun along ruthlessly, with no ballad lullabies.
Let’s hope The Darkness stay the course this time, that the experience from years ago taught them a lot, and that the Hawkins brothers will hold out beside each other. Without them there’s no The Darkness, and anything else they took on would leave a bitter aftertaste, as if the essential seasoning were missing from the dish. At the Vienna gig The Darkness proved their greatness as voluptuous rock ‘n’ roll acrobats of the new era, who carry a rare skill in their little finger. And that skill puts them among the best stage performers. They offer excellent stage execution and at the same time spice it with a deliberately placed overdose of fun-theater excess. Exactly what people need today to switch off in these leaden times of the last days of Western civilization, to which we’ve been driven by the virus of liberal capitalism, which in Germany now apparently even privatizes water. Rock ‘n’ roll is a catapult to ecstasy in a parallel world that we illusorily paint before our eyes. And after what they showed in Vienna, The Darkness remain one of the most convincing standard-bearers of rock ‘n’ roll magic. Sinful rascals. And what else? Sinfully good, of course! To the bone.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
GINGER WILDHEART BAND:
1. Swimwear
2. It Appears That the Party Is Over
3. Feral Days
4. Lock for Rock (and Other Sporting Cliches)
5. How I Survived the Punk Wars
6. Taste Aversion
7. Brain Sugar
8. Over Easy
9. The Queen of Leaving
10. Do the Channel Bop
THE DARKNESS:
The Boys Are Back in Town (tape intro)
1. Every Inch of You
2. Black Shuck
3. Growing on Me
4. She’s Just a Girl, Eddie
5. One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back
6. Nothin’s Gonna Stop Us
7. Get Your Hands Off My Woman
8. Love Is Only a Feeling
9. Friday Night
10. Concrete
11. How Dare You Call This Love?
12. Givin’ Up
13. Stuck in a Rut
14. I Believe in a Thing Called Love
—encore—
15. The Best Of Me
16. Everybody Have A Good Time
17. Street Spirit (Fade Out)
18. Love On The Rox With No Ice
