One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back!

Yes, the "Men What Do Rock" are back purveying "Rock-Based Music of Exceptional Quality". But how good is their second effort? The artefactory investigates.

First, the reviews.

Kerrang say it's the most massive sounding rock album since Def Leppard's "Hysteria", giving it a KKKKK rating.

Classic Rock say it makes Def Leppard's "Hysteria" look like a four-track demo and call it album of the year.

Rolling Stone say that, on the title track, the bravado is unmistakable -- a chorus with the sold-out-arena kick of Def Leppard's "Rock Rock ('Til You Drop)" - the words of David Fricke who wrote the Leppard biography, Animal Instinct.

As with Hysteria, this album was a bit of a long struggle. The Darkness were trying to follow up their previous enormously success, Permission to Land.

And as Leppard did, The Darkness seem to have done some shopping around for a producer. Leppard first went with Jim Steinman (Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler) as producer before returning to the legendary Mutt Lange. The Darkness couldn't agree terms with Lange and went with Roy Thomas Baker (Queen, Foreigner, The Cars).

The new album... the sound is much better than before, sacrificing the hard edged crunch from the first record for a more rounded sound. Some of it is overblown with strings and bagpipes and sitars and pan-pipes. The harmonies, swirling strings etc are all generally very Queen-like.

Bald is easily the most interesting track here, who the heck thinks of rhyming "follicle" with "diabolical"! The song opens with a sort ofdoom-laden intro with church bells, but then goes off into the sort ofZeppelin-esque epic that powered Pyromania. It's never so dark as to be serious so they get away with it.

One Way Ticket lifts both form and riff from AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" but then AC/DC would regard cowbells, harmonies, sitars, and the coke-snorting that opens the song as incredibly effete. Only a master producer like RTB could make this sort of mess sound good, and his Queen-like flourishes make this an instant classic. Not sure if the coke-snorting intro is lifted from Rammstein's Kokain.

Dinner Lady Arms the most Leppardesque song here, with a beautifulintro that reminds me of Animal and Stand Up (Kick Love Into Motion). The chorus is all Queen for variation. I wish Mutt Lange had produced this but it's very good anyway.B

Is It Just Me to me sounds lifted from AC/DC's Big Gun (riff) and Shoot to Thrill (form) but then takes on a life of its own. Very catchy.

Knockers as juvenile as the title suggests. Intro sounds like Leppard-lite. Insanely catchy.

Blind Man Queen-influenced dreamy-sounding closing track, very well done.

English Country Garden Perfect Queen pastiche with a Meat Loaf piano intro. Very English, very silly.

Hazel Eyes more English whimsy. Pretty silly too but will probably be a mass singalong with everyone jigging about when they do it live with all the bagpipes and marching-beat drums.

Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time starts out as a crap ballad laden with strings but then gets Queen-like and more interesting. Rips off their own Love Is Only A Feeling.

Girlfriend Status Quo with some very camp disco flourishes, almost sound Abba-esque.

So the verdict? Some misses but enough hit to make it all well worth it.It's short at 35 minutes so the bad bits pass by quickly.

History tells us that two of RTB's later bands, namely Foreigner and the Cars, went on to do great work with Mutt Lange. With Foreigner we got Waiting For A Girl Like You, Urgent, Juke Box Hero. With the Cars, it was Drive, Magic, You Might Think... so who knows?

Interestingly, other reviewers seem to have seen every band in here from Aerosmith to Bachman-Turner Overdrive to everybody I have mentioned up above. It's almost as if every rock fan listener is reading into this record their own favourites, whatever it is they are most familiar with. Perhaps we ought to see this as an indicator of just how well the Darkness have been able to distill and incorporate all these pretty disparate influences.

Top effort!