With no Dublin date as of yet, and having missed The Darkness Munster jolly-ups in Limerick and Kerry in June, I’m on the 10:50 am train from Dublin Connolly to Belfast for a bit of craic with one of the most fun and consistently brilliant live acts on the planet.
The Darkness
Custom House Square, Belfast – 9 August 2025
Photography: Steven Maloney
Words: Brian Boyle
If truth be known, the trip to County Antrim would have been made anyway, for when The Darkness come calling, you whip on your nut-busting catsuit and you answer.
So my son Ryan and I are going in style, standard class, semi-flexible fare, whatever the hell that is. There is no overpriced catering trolley, but the stereotypical Irish mother/wife has made us a pallet load of sandwiches, enough to make our shared table resemble The Last Supper, but with a large bottle of Fanta.
The excruciatingly loud hen-do on board, complete with a blow-up sheep named Larry Lamb Chops, makes the journey a sort of punishment or an endurance test, one or the other.
Our digs are a Premier Inn no less. We can’t have Lenny Henry going hungry now, can we? A booking balls up by yours truly meant sharing a double bed with the boy was on the cards. Thankfully, the legend at reception worked his magic, and the prospect of building a pillow wall down the centre of the bed was avoided.
Being the ever-loving father, my 6’2 son got the single bed, and his bald creator got the double. I was paying after all.
Not surprisingly, the reviews from the Southern Ireland gigs were fantastic. The band appear to be in the form of their lives, and their latest opus, the all-thrilla, no-vanilla Dreams On Toast, really has injected some extra prime lead back into their respective pencils.
With a belly full of chicken wings and a couple of jaw-breaking burgers, the boy and I sluggishly make our way to the centre of Belfast city.
Tonight’s gathering takes place at Custom House Square, not a million miles from where that famous ship was built, you know, the one Leo and Kate had a spitting contest on it, then got very nautical below deck.
It is an impressive setting, if a little quirky, but we are dealing with a band who are as quirky as they come, and proudly so.
And they like to make an entrance.
The customary aerial bombardment of Abba’s Arrival circled the sky above Custom House Square, then a bright orange logo of the band appeared, and set off genuine shudders of excitement. It was like a mass gathering awaiting contact with species from another planet.
But let’s face it, The Darkness are not of this world, but that is exactly why we love them. As Queen’s Roger Taylor perfectly put it in the Welcome To The Darkness documentary, it’s “channelled lunacy”. And that is exactly what kicked tonight off.
Strolling on in their usual nonchalant way, they lit the touchpaper with the gloriously nuts Rock And Roll Party Cowboy, and basically gave their faithful one gargantuan glam-asm.
Justin Hawkins looked bang up for a night on the boards, throwing his air lasso, then doing his best David St. Hubbins with a mean growl of heavy metulll. Then a couple of old boys, Growing On Me woke a couple of android gazers up, but it was the half a dozen or so toddlers on their aching parents’ shoulders giving it loads, that completely stole the moment. Absolutely priceless.
Then, after an affectionate two fingers to Irish writer and Darkness personal trainer Pat Carty, they ploughed through Get Your Hands Off My Woman, with Hawkins stretching his larynx to the max.
And apart from his always impressive headstand, it was the song’s false ending and duping of the photographers into thinking their three song slot had ended that left the biggest mark.
Peter Kay was in town tonight too, but Hawkins “joke’s on them, the song hasn’t ended,” quip as they left the pit, was the work of proper comedic genius.
With the light fading, the less lauded, but stalwart bangers like Motorheart and Barbarian kept the carefree Saturday night vibe simmering nicely.
Out of the new tunes, Walking Through Fire is surely one that will not be shelved on future tours. When you can instruct a crowd who have had a few sherbets to march left and right on the spot with tipsy precision, you are surely onto a winner. 
Balancing the set perfectly, another classic is dispatched, with Love Is Only A Feeling having its usual unifying effect.
Another new recruit, The Longest Kiss, is a sheer delight when spinning on a turntable or streaming on a long country walk, but mid-set live, and when the band are on gas mark 11, it is just a joyous toe-curler.
Just over an hour earlier, Dan Hawkins surprisingly popped up with support band Ash and former Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell for an impromptu sounding Whiskey In The Jar.
While his sweet acoustic notes worked their magic, when he loaded up the riff to Givin’ Up, this was when you saw this man in all his low-slung Gibson glory.
This song never fails to have a shit loosing effect on a crowd, and tonight’s collective yell of Givin’ Up was yet another release of highly charged abandon.
The old reliable Japanese Prisoner Of Love was its usual blast of Metal exuberance, only to be upstaged by the sheer love-in that was Friday Night.
Then for a bit of classic Darkness mucking about. A bite-sized portion of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song was like getting repeated jabs in the face from Oleksandr Usyk. A toned-down and off-season version of Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End) was plenty for early autumn.
And as Dublin prepares for the Gallagher brothers’ egos to be crane lifted into Croke Park next week, cheeky little stabs at Supersonic and Cigarettes & Alcohol were brilliantly somewhere in-between mocking and admiration.
Justin Hawkins’ disdain for mobile phone use at concerts is well known, and his hammed-up meltdown after stopping I Believe In A Thing Called Love for the most part was acknowledged. How this song went down will probably be stating the bleedin’ obvious, but living every bit of it without having your device held aloft is so much better for the soul.
Heading on for ninety minutes without coming up for air, closer I Hate Myself was like a sprint to the finish, wearing Status Quo’s running shoes from the ’70s. This song had everything, Hawkins was doing The Twist just like your uncle probably did at 1.30 am at a wedding.
Up at the back, drummer and now Cornish pub landlord Rufus Tiger Taylor was committing repeated GBH on his poor tubs. No, that’s underplaying it. It was more like a percussive reign of terror. Through all this, Frankie Poullain was his calm and collected self, happy to let his bandmates raise their blood pressure levels while he tickled his bass.
Whether they are playing in the function room of The Royal Hotel on Valentia Island in County Kerry, or an estimated half a million people at The Polish Woodstock, the work ethic of The Darkness remains the same. They just live to play, and anywhere.
The Darkness are still the best fun you can have with your clothes on, or off. Whatever you fancy.
