The Darkness have announced a UK and Ireland tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of ‘Permission To Land’.
The ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ rockers – made up of guitar playing brothers Justin and Dan Hawkins, bassist Frankie Poullain and drummer Rufus Taylor – will hit the road in December for a nine-date run hitting cities like Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester and London.
The tour kicks off in Belfast on December 2, followed by shows in Dublin on December 3 and Norwich on December 8 before hitting the Roundhouse in London on December 9.
Gigs in Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham follow before the tour comes to an end at Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall.
The group will play ‘Permission To Land’ – which also features singles ‘Growing On Me’ and ‘Love Is Only A Feeling’ – in full, as well as tracks from their six other albums.
Frontman Justin previously explained there was something special about making their first album, as they honed their craft in front of live audiences.
He told BANG Showbiz: “Those songs, I don’t know. That album, all the material on it is road tested, we’d played every song on that album a thousand times before we recorded it because those were the songs we had when we were coming up.
“We had a focus group of our entire fanbase for the first album. As they grew, we could feel our way through a collection of songs that made a great album. We don’t have that luxury anymore, we have to try and guess!”
For the album’s 10th anniversary, the ‘Friday Night’ group played the 10 tracks in their entirety, and the singer admitted he’d be open to a similar celebration for 2005’s sophomore effort ‘One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back’ one day..
He added: “Yeah, definitely a temptation. We did that before for ‘Permission To Land’, and that was a really good fun tour.
“It was like an outreach tour, we did hidden parts of the country we hadn’t had a chance to do before. I’d love to do that, that’d be great.”