The Darkness
Manchester Academy
Sunday 13 November 2011

This was my third time to see The Darkness and in terms of the actual music and experience, there isn't a lot to add to my reviews of 01.12.04 and 18.02.06, except as stated below, that there is some well needed "rawness" being introduced.

In other ways though, things have changed very much on The Darkness front, and this is shown most vividly by the fact that they are now playing a little teeny venue like the Manchester Academy, as opposed to the MEN Arena. There were plenty of pyrotechnics, but it was on a much more modest scale, and there was no pair of gigantic knockers to lower Justin to the stage. The root of the matter seems to be that things imploded when their Christmas single didn’t get to number one, and following from that, the whole experience of their second album seems to have been so unpleasant that it shattered them - they disbanded fir years and this tour is very much in the nature of a getting back together, re-union tour - see if it all works out?

It was a very enjoyable show - nice and loud and raunchy and true to the spirit of glam rock. It seemed to benefit by being in the smaller and more intimate surroundings - much more excitement, much more sweat and real music. My personal disappointment was that there was little or nothing from the second album - probably for the reasons stated above - but "Bald" is one of my favourite tracks of all time, up there with the best of Judas Priest, AC/DC and Black Sabbath - so it's absence was very sad for me and indicates how bad things must have got for them.

Most of the material was from the first album, but there was a sizeable amount of new material from a new album due out in 2012. The whole show and experience is now much rawer - more Thin Lizzy or Led Zep than Queen, and that's a good thing! The new album should be really good - and when I buy it, I’ll then own as many Darkness albums as concerts by them that I have attended