Return of The Darkness?

As you may know, I love the rock and roll. One of my favorite bands from the last decade was The Darkness, a balls-to-the-wall English hard rock band who seemed to be the cheeky love child of Queen and AC/DC. Their debut album, Permission to Land, came in at #16 on my list of my Top 100 favorite albums of the 2000s, and their second album, One Way Ticket to Hell . . . And Back, came in at #45. Their signature song, "I Believe In a Thing Called Love" is my #1 song from the last decade. I absolutely love that song. I've even been known to sing it at live band karaoke as a birthday present for my lovely wife, even if the performance wasn't as great as I'd like to remember.

I had the pleasure of the band in concert in Columbus back in '04, along with Wildhearts, and it was a great show. It was before they had released their second album, and they played a few songs from that album, in addition to every song off of Permission to Land. They seemed like the future of hard arena rock. However, lead singer Justin Hawkins fell into the problems that accompany being a rock star, and decided in 2006 to quit the band for the sake of his health. I was crushed, but I understood.

And then today, I get an email from The Weez with a link to a story that, gulp, reunited. For any of you lucky enough to go to the Download Festival in Donnington (for some reason, I'm assuming I have a lot of British readers), The Darkness is playing tomorrow night before Def Leppard. Damn, that would be one of my dream shows. Apparently, The Darkness played a club show a couple days ago, featuring a couple new songs, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us" and "Cannonball." The audio isn't great on the clips, but you can tell they still rock. I'm hoping this means a new album is in the works (and, of course, the resulting US tour).

Here are the Darkness songs I could find on Playlist.com: