The Prince of Darkness

GW grills The Darkness guitarist Justin Hawkins on just about everything — rehab, farts, breakups, tunings, country music and the band's new record, an undeniable return to form called - what else? - Dreams on Toast

- BY JON WIEDERHORN

SEEMINGLY OUT OF nowhere, the Darkness swooped out of Suffolk, England, and onto the international music scene in 2003 with their high-voltage debut, Permission to Land. At a time when hipster bands including the Strokes, the White Stripes and Kings of Leon were making inroads with the alt-rock community, the Darkness were an anathema, wearing loud, glam-influenced outfits and bashing out energetic anthems propelled by white-hot power chord riffs, flashy leads and sometimes ridiculous-sounding falsetto vocals.

Many rock fans embraced the exuberance of the anachronistic quartet, composed of frontman Justin Hawkins, his guitarist brother Dan, bassist Frankie Poullain and drummer Ed Graham. But music purists dismissed the Darkness as a parody band, comparing them to Spinal Tap instead of aligning them with their true heroes, Queen and AC/DC. Songs that abounded with double-entendres about genital herpes (“Growing on Me”), masturbation (“Holding My Own”) and a mythical demon-dog (“Black Shuck”) only fueled the rock-satire accusations. Regardless, the album quickly topped the U.K. charts — where it went quadruple platinum and hit Number 36 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S., where it went gold.

To this day, Justin Hawkins admits he is drawn to the ribald, even juvenile lyrics and antics of AC/DC and has always believed that a good sense of humor makes rock 'n' roll more fun. He also cops to being a big fan of This Is Spinal Tap, but stops short of accepting that the Darkness were ever intended to emulate Tap.