“We’re serious about everything, even having fun,” Frankie Poullain once told triple j of his band The Darkness.
With an abundance of screaming guitar solos, B movie styled videos featuring spaceships and pterodactyls, and a frontman given to gyrating about in catsuits, The Darkness struck us immediately as serious fun with their 2003 debut Permission to Land.
After years of slogging away in various rock band line-ups, trying to drum up some sort of record label interest, the reaction to their debut drew a stark line between the critical and the fan response when it went to the top of the UK charts.
“We feel vindicated because we've had lots of doubters, lots of cynics and lots of killjoys who refuse to take what we do seriously,” bassist Poullain told Richard Kingsmill on triple j in 2003.
“People think ‘they’re glammy, they can’t have any depth’ but what we do isn't glam rock. What we do is what the Americans and probably what the Australians would call rock and roll.
"But the British, perhaps a couple of journalists out of a hundred interviews has actually recognised the fact that we are a live rock and roll band.”
Listening to Permission to Land's ten tracks, you can definitely hear the band wearing their influences like Queen, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Thin Lizzy and Foreigner proudly.
You can also hear the sound of a band who thoroughly know their way around delivering a stadium crushing anthem through huge songs like 'Love Is Only A Feeling', 'Growing On Me', 'Get Your Hands off My Woman' and of course 'I Believe In A Thing Called Love'.
