Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

It is hard when you are on the edges, when thrown to the sides like an outcast sat at the city gates, looking for scraps of comfort and knowing that deep down your thoughts are about as welcome as the plague, but as you sit in the far reaches of a gathering and you don’t get the hype, the sentimental leaning of those caught in the whirlwind of supposed excitement at the front of the stage, the slight stance of indifference towards the middle and the abject mind wanderings at the back, that just how you are supposed to feel about The Darkness.

Yes the band put on a show, there is no doubt whatsoever that the cheeky sincerity of belief in Justin Hawkins, the groove in which they ply their obvious trade was riveting to those caught in the maelstrom at the front of the stage but as a group, performing only second to Alice Cooper, the mind sometimes freezes at why such things happen.

The Darkness are arguably the most Marmite of bands, either lorded and salivated over or just left at the back, on the side of the plate, poked around by a fork on a dinner plate with the small lump of gristle. The passion is there in performance, the self belief overflowing and with a hardiness that defies convention and the roar in some sections of the crowd irrefutable, yet still there was the nagging remain that the group will never be truly seen as the draw they hope to dare to be.

With tracks such as Growing On Me, Black Shuck, One Way Ticket and their monster hit I Believe In A Thing Called Love all thrown into the tornado, the wind reaching epidemic levels of hysteria in some sections, The Darkness proved their point admirably but it was one that left casualties, that left many on the sidelines and not drawn in to the pulse, scratching their heads and perhaps undignified, wondering if they had time to escape before the main act of the Saturday came forward.

Marmite is all well and good but to give it a higher space on the cupboard shelf and above something perhaps more digestible is to worry where will it all end?

Ian D. Hall