“I’m not a big fan of bands that take themselves too seriously. Look at Angus Young. He’s a grown man who wears a schoolboy uniform”: Justin Hawkins unfiltered – the inside story about the rise, fall and rebirth of the Darkness

Justin Hawkins of the Darkness is shirtless onstage and rocking out.

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.