Live Review : The Darkness + Ash @ O2 Apollo, Manchester on March 31st 2025

It's easy to attribute The Darkness’s recent return to cultural relevance to appearances on the Michael Mcintyre show and viral Taylor Swift videos. However, this overnight resurrection is actually 14 years in the making. You see, the rehabilitation of Justin Hawkins and his erstwhile bandmates is the product of hard graft. Since their illustrious return in 2011, they have worked their collective socks off to not only avoid the nostalgia treadmill but also to reclaim the street cred they briefly held aloft in the mid-noughties. Relentless touring has paid off, and here they are at the tail end of a sold-out trek that has seen them reclaim the venues that they last haunted nearly twenty years ago. To top it all, they are promoting a new record that has collectively out-sold everything between it and “Permission to Land” (though as Justin testifies later, it won't be number one due to going up against Mumford and Sons). By the sheer power of never actually going away, The Darkness are back. 

Whilst they categorically refuse to look backwards, there is a nod to the retrospective by bringing Ash out with them as support, given that they also backed them up during their era-defining arena tour in 2004. In many ways Ash are the Dorian Grey of the retro indie scene, given that despite clocking up over 32 years in the business, none of the band are yet to celebrate their fiftieth birthdays. They still embody the same youth Vigor that saw them become the darlings of the music press during Britpop’s initial insurgence. Their set is a frothy greatest hits affair that firmly asserts them as being heavier than you remember.

Opener ‘Goldfinger’ feels ripped straight from those far-off days when Grunge was new and challenging, whilst ‘Angel Interceptor’ and ‘Orpheus’ sound deceptively fresh and vigorous given that they are both more than twenty years old. Headlining Glastonbury at their cusp of their twenties leaves a lot of life left to try to live up to that sort of accomplishment. Ash, in exactly the same configuration as they have always been, seem to lean into their new status as dad or mum’s favourite from way back when.

As they plough through their set, the crowd shuffle appreciatively but fail to fully engage, instead seemingly keeping their enthusiasm in check for the main event. Bizarrely enough, it is not a nugget from Ash’s colossal back catalogue that awakens the crowd from their collective slumber. Instead it is a rather dandy cover of Harry Belfonte’s ‘Jump In Line’ (as featured in Paddington 2), that sees the rows of vintage Darkness merch come to life. A closing salvo of ‘Girl from Mars’ and ‘Burn Baby Burn’ seals the deal and by this point the Monday Night Blues have been forcibly banished, and an impressively full Apollo are now eating out of their hands.

For all the platitudes that Ash receive, this is The Darkness crowd. It is a bizarre mix of those who kept the faith during the wilderness years, the dreaded “one gig a year” musical tourists, rockers and metallers looking for a little cheese in their life and children, lots of children. In fact a far more youthful attendance than you would expect for a band with such a potty-mouthed reputation. There are probably fewer kids than there would have been if the show had gone ahead on the Saturday evening that it was meant, but there still enough under 18s around the place to ensure that the bar is disorientatingly quiet.

The Darkness were classic rock, back when classic rock were dirty words only fit to be uttered in derision. The remarkable part of their restoration to glory is that they haven’t changed a bit. Public taste has shifted to once again make them cool, The Darkness have never compromised, never shifted, never moved. Opener ‘Rock and Roll Party Cowboy’ may well be ripped from the new album, but it bristles with the same level of unashamed rock n’ roll adoration that made them so exciting in the first place. The Darkness realise that rock n’ roll was always meant to be fun. It was always designed as a bloated caricature of itself and The Darkness revel in that self-aware silliness. There is no po-faced introspection here, tonight is about forgetting your troubles and embracing the bonkers nature of this beautiful art form.

Whilst they may well be hawking their new album like an East End barrow boy, they also know that we are here for the songs that we know. ‘Growing on Me’ and ‘Get your Hands off my Woman (Murtha F#cker)’ are both dispensed with early doors and illicit a mass sing-along that sets the standard for the evening. The familiar refrains are bellowed out in a flurry of rampant joyfulness. The Darkness have never intended themselves to be taken seriously, but boy do they know how to craft a good tune.

Recovered from the throat infection that necessitated the rescheduling of this show, Justin is in fine form this evening. He is in full self-deprecating mode, tempering the rock star swagger with a glug of pointed British banter that he is more than happy to be the butt off. He makes friends with a family in the front row, intrigued by the fact that the initial show’s cancellation drew the unit’s matriarch to tears. He keeps returning to them and duets with the Mum, known as Karen, on the opening strains of ‘Friday Night’. 

But tonight is not just about the hits. There is a new album freshly on the shelves and the band are rather proud of it. Justin goes off script to berate his record label for putting them in a David and Goliath tussle with the anodyne Mumfords, as the newly released mid-week placings have shown that no matter the number of units that they shift they will have to content themselves with number two. Now they may well have wanted to crown their reassertion with a top of the pile placing, but they should be happy to live with the fact that “Dreams on Toast” is in no doubt the best thing they have produced since their heyday.

‘Longest Kiss’, ‘I hate Myself’ and ‘Mortal Dread’ are all set mainstays in waiting, whilst ‘Walking through the Fire’ is a self-aware, postmodern masterpiece. It playfully sends up the current state of the music industry by wickedly proclaiming in a tongue-in-cheek sentiment that “We never stopped making hit albums, it's just that no one buys them anymore”. It even comes with its own dance moves that sees the entire stalls happily march in any direction that Justin demands. So proud the band are with their new stuff that they make the ultimate commitment to their art and use the just released material for their encore. 

This means that that the final furlong of the main set is a fantastically extravagant one-two of the aforementioned ‘Friday Night’ and that song. The Darkness are fully aware of the gravitational pull of that song and make a big deal about its impending arrival. Justin demands that phones be relegated to our pockets and that we revel in the moment. The moment turns out to be a gloriously euphoric slice of glam-tinged rock that never gets old. ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ has now eclipsed the bombastic rock anthems it was meant to emulate. It has become the floor-filling monster that it aped and the band eck out every minute and every inch of its magnificence.

The Darkness have ridden the rough shots and come out a better band. The playful non-conformity is still there, but rather than be a self-aware pastiche of stadium rock, they have become the real deal. They are a British heavy rock band that doesn’t just want to not be taken seriously but see the joy in ploughing their own furrow. Rather than being a band to sneer at, The Darkness have now become a national treasure. A beautiful joy-inducing entity that captures the utter wonder and spectacle of rock n’ roll. We needed The Darkness twenty years ago and do you know what? We need them even more now.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
The Darkness + Ash