The Darkness Singer Tells Crowd He Got A Prince Albert In Toronto

Sold-out crowds (one scalper was selling $20 tickets for $100) are scary — especially for The Darkness. The crowd is half diehard rocker, half curious suburbanite looking for a few drunken laughs.

Most people think the whole Darkness trip is some crazy gag, so you can imagine how weird the Phoenix felt on this lukewarm Monday night. That feeling dissipated as local openers C'Mon revved up. Basically using the show as their Toronto debut, C'Mon features Ian Blurton (Blurtonia, Bionic) and Katie Lynn (Nashville Pussy) building up a wall of sound that seemed almost impossible for even The Darkness to break through.

Blending sugary melodies with Blurton's signature over-overdriven guitar sound, theirs was a style mixing Blurton's Can-Rock knowledge with Lynn's southern rock grit. Even more entertaining than the band was watching many of the shocked, yet enthralled, suburbanites leer at this eerily entrancing act.

Parading out on stage in garish '70s rock fashion, The Darkness introduced themselves with a short instrumental passage before kicking into a hearty dose of their debut album, Permission To Land.

Bold and proud, the foursome swaggered around the stage as if they owned it. And the hot, sweaty crowd? We loved it. There were constant singalongs where the audience almost drowned out singer Justin Hawkins. And they almost mauled the emaciated man to death as he rode about the masses on the shoulders of a roadie during a bout of crowd interaction.

Seeing the band beam as they energetically strode through a few newer songs and crowd-pleasers such as "Get Your Hands Off My Woman," it was as if someone had transplanted Led Zeppelin's greatest performance at Wembley into the tiny confines of the Phoenix from both perspectives: the band were pleased kings and the crowd were aching to spur them on.

To their credit, The Darkness took it all in stride, enjoying the moment but never once displaying an air of self-importance. For many, this was their first dealing with The Darkness, their garish stage fashions, scissor-kicks and hand-clapping, so it was easy to have decadent amounts of fun. And while the band played flawlessly, constantly kicking it up until the last few seconds, for anyone who saw them on their last visit to Toronto, it was already a bit of the same-old.

Ah, here's the big solo. Yup, the crooning. Oh, the "Love On The Rocks With No Ice" intro.

All in all, this didn't hamper the show much, but some revamp will be required before the band's next visit.

Thankfully, that will probably come with a whole new album, fresh songs and even more money to pour into the event. Finally, many He-Man points go to Hawkins, who revealed to the audience that he was the proud new owner of a Prince Albert piercing (look down boys... waaay down...) thanks to Toronto' own New Tribe Tattoos.

If he was in pain, it didn't show. Despite having a chunk of steel rammed through the mushroom of his goo tap, Hawkins still pranced and danced, jumped and bumped his way around the Phoenix stage with ease straight until the final note.

Filing out, even our small circle of jaded rock critics had to admit that, as frustrating as they are on record, live, The Darkness are impeccable. Almost untouchable.