The Darkness "One Way Ticket To Hell...And Back" Review

...OK, before I start this review, let me say that I do have sympathy for bands who have to put out second albums. They usually have years to accrue material for their debut album, having had time to road test as many songs as they can in front of an audience eager to forgive them if they fuck up with the quality of the songs and then taking the cream of the crop into the studio to record it and start to make their dreams in the music world...only to then be expected to produce the same results when they're on tour, unable to road test the new material and likely have less time than the band have been together to get the album ready for release. It's understandably daunting and most bands mess it up to at least a minor extent. This is the reason behind the infamous "second album syndrome": bands simply can't pull themselves together under all of that pressure and, almost inevitably, descend into being a mediocre version of the band that gave their debut album of the world. Sometimes, bands will often combine this with a misguided attempt at maturity with their music, going from writing material that is just aiming to be fun to trying to be serious, or, probably even worse, try to experiment with their sound while there's that pressure. Seriously, professional tip for any up and coming bands reading this: do not use your second album to push the boundaries of your sound. Just focus on pulling yourselves together enough to get through your second album cycle by producing a good album that will give the label enough confidence to let you have some freedom regarding when you want to get your next album out and then try experimenting with your sound, as you'll have a bit more of an opportunity to do it right when you don't have the label breathing down your neck and demanding to know when your next album is going to be done.

Anyway, The Darkness fell into the trap of trying to experiment with their sound with this, their second album, with the end result of producing an album that falls apart under its weight due to being too ambitious for its own good. However, I wouldn't stoop to the level of calling this an outright bad album either, as it's still very enjoyable in its own right and, for all of the ambitious experimenting that probably could have been dialled back upon, most of it actually works! It's just that they overdid it a bit.

I already covered the band's history in my review of their debut album, but I'll fill you in on the gaps between releasing their debut album and their second album. Basically, the band became pretty big, but seemed to grow a bit disillusioned with their success, as they walked out an episode of US radio show Loveline in April 2004. This album came out about two and half years after their debut and already people were getting kind of sick of the band by that point (although I'm not entirely sure why myself, as I didn't follow the popular press at the time and, as such, have no idea how frequently present the band were in it). The costly delays in the process of making the album meant that it apparently ended up costing about a million pounds to finally release. When it came out in November 2005, it received mixed reviews, didn't sell as well as Permission To Land did, didn't produce a single as high charting as Permission To Land did (although the lead single apparently got up to number 8 in the charts...although I don't recall hearing or seeing it until I got the album as a Christmas present in 2011, so make of that what you will. Admittedly, I was having difficulties with my private life at the time due to a lot of stuff going on and I didn't exactly have access to the radio or the popular music charts at the time, so it's not like I was listening for them at the time!) and, less than a year later, the band had broken up to become Stone Gods.

Some will say that was a fitting time for the band to disappear: they had no chance of remaining a success any more and they could politely fade away to obscurity while everyone else got back on with their lives. But, as I implied two paragraphs ago, I don't think this album is as bad as the reputation it has would have you thinking it is. Yes, it tears itself apart with how ambitious it is, but it is still a fairly enjoyable album if you look at it without the hype that must have surrounded the album when it was coming out.

First up, the cover art. I won't lie, I love this artwork! Sure, it's not the best artwork out there by any measure, but come on, a train speeding down a railroad track with a demonic head in the smoke clearly controlling the train? You can't exactly accuse them of running out of ideas on the album cover front! Although it does leave the potential open to some terrible puns about how their career derailed after this album, but now they're back on track and that train keeps a-rolling!

...Yeah, OK, I'll stop with the puns. Here's the cover art.

I will admit that a lot of the pitfalls I mentioned last time rear their ugly head here, only they are arguably a bit worse this time. The lyrics are generally better overall (although I'd still be struggling to throw the word "Good" at any of the lyrics on the album), but "Bald" reeks of an almost unseen level of laziness in the lyrics department due to the fact that it reads like it wasn't intended as song writing lyrics, but was intended as a humorous bit of writing which, for some bizarre reason, got put into a song. I'm not kidding, they don't read even slightly like they are written to be sung! Another issue is that Hawkins appears more willing to indulge in the use of his upper range, which can lead to several moments where even those who love falsetto screams will be wishing for the tasteful restraint a lot of screamers have by comparison. The production is also even louder than the last time, which is somewhat perplexing when you notice that the band dialled back on the AC/DC influence (it's still there, just not as noticeable) and got Queen's producer (Roy Thomas Baker) to produce the album, so you'd expect a more tastefully done production job. "Hazel Eyes" in particular has a rather noticeable bit where the second chorus, for some reason, isn't as loudly mastered as the other times the chorus appears in the song, which suggests to me that the mastering on this album wasn't completely finished when the album was sent off, although it's also possible that the guy doing the mastering (Stephen Marcussen) simply missed that bit of the song and nobody else noticed for some reason...

This album also introduced new bassist Richie Edwards, who was formerly the band's guitar tech. However, most of the album's bass tracks were recorded by Dan Hawkins after bassist Frankie Poullain left the band (some sources mention that he left via a window, but I can't confirm the truth of that statement), so I can't say how much of an impact he had on the recording process for this album.

Anyway, moving to the album itself, I have to return to my comment earlier about the band upping the Queen influence in their music: a lot of instruments that are rather unconventional in a lot of hard rock music make an appearance on the album, with probably the most noticeable being the pan flute, an instrument that, to my knowledge, has never been combined with rock music before or since this album. They also dial back the AC/DC influence a bit, albeit not enough to really say that the band have really found their own sound on this album. They sound a bit like they're chasing as many different sounds as they can on the album and, while they do them pretty well, they don't seem to know how to really add them to their sound properly, in the same manner as a dog chasing after a car and, when it catches it, immediately going after a different car. This is the big problem with this album that really starts to sink it once you spot it: there's a huge amount of variety across the album that makes the album really enjoyable to listen to, but the band seem like they don't know how to sound like themselves on this album, which makes all of the variety seem like an attempt to cover up this fact. When Queen did it, you could still detect musical roots that meant you could recognise a Queen album as a Queen album, even if you'd heard instrumental versions of the songs. Here, however, the variety doesn't seem to have those roots holding it together properly. Some songs flat out don't sound like they're by the same band who gave us Permission To Land. This somewhat schizophrenic approach to songwriting just doesn't work properly when the only thing holding it all together is your lead vocalist. Sure, it shows you can be a varied composer (or group of composers, if you don't have only one guy doing the composing for the band), but the problem is that you don't really develop your own sound.

This schizophrenia with the song writing, sadly, also carries over to the quality of the material. Some songs could rival that of the band's debut album pretty easily, like "One Way Ticket" and "Hazel Eyes", but some songs just feel like they didn't have all of their effort put into writing them, like "Bald" and "Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time". Most songs at least lean towards the former more than the latter, but you definitely get the feeling that there's been a decrease in songwriting quality between this album and the last one.

So, with all of that in mind, why do I say this is still a fairly enjoyable album if all that I've said seems to point towards it being a bad album? Because most of it, surprisingly, still works! Yes, they expanded their pallet so much that they forgot who they were and the material generally isn't quite up to the standards as on their debut, but it's still enjoyable to listen to and I'd still say that nothing on the album is outright bad on it (as much as I don't like "Bald" much). In that regard, I'd still say the album's a success!

Still, I will admit that it might have been for the better that this was the last album by The Darkness before their break up. While I suspect they might have found a much better balance between the sounds of this album and their debut had they kept it together for long enough to release their third album that they were working on for a 2007 release date, I suspect the truth is that the band would have probably released an album that would have suffered from the same issues that this one did, only with diminishing returns in the quality department. Maybe it was for the best that the band did their other projects and came back together later...

Final Rating: 6 Out Of 10

A definitely weaker album than their debut, but still very enjoyable. If you still have The Darkness' debut sitting around and haven't bothered to check this out, I'd recommend doing it, as you might be pleasantly surprised. If you never liked The Darkness, then this probably won't win you over.

Personal Favourite Songs: "One Way Ticket", "Hazel Eyes"