One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back
music — UK — 2005

7.0
Special author note: I`ve changed my mind and now I`m ready to accept this as a really fine record. I`m not sure why I gave it such a very low rating in the first place and I`m too lazy to re-read what I`ve written here, so take my word - "One way ticket" is a real fine record after all. Still, since it probably depicts some of the feelings for the record I had something like 50 days ago, I won`t delete everything written below. Why would I? "Girlfriend" still has a ZZ-Top riff though.
"The Darkness" is the most flamboyant, arrogant and comical band of goofsters in modern United Kingdom. They are playing overblown and pompous music as if they were a reborn version of Queen, which is no wonder for their lead singer Justin Hawkins does sound like Freddy M. indeed. "One Way Ticket" is the bands second album and it follows the trends set by their first record. Personally I didn`t listen the latter particulary much, the only thing that I do remember from it was the hit single "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" which was hilarious. On the new disc you won`t find anything as immediately striking as that song but it doesn`t mean that "oWTtHaB" is a bad album. The weird thing about "Darkness" is that it`s usually compared to Queen and other bands from the 1980s although "Queen" certainly is a band from the seventies and "Darkness" follows the pattern of merging 70`s "Queen" to 80`s hair metal bands. The good thing about the band its clear understanding that they`re just a bunch of goofballs and not serious and pretentious artists. But the bad thing is that although I said that their new album isn`t bad at all in fact I find little good songs on it. "Hazel Eyes" is kinda cool with the crazy falsetto by Justin. "Knockers" is relatively catchy. I probably like The title track is moderately good, so is "Seemed like a good idea at the time" but it just doesn`t work for 100% on any song. Although most albums by "Queen" contained a huge amount of filler there were usually at least a few stand out tracks that momentarily striked you as brilliant. On "OWTTHAB" you don`t get that. "Queen" meets "Poison" equals a joke gone bad. It`s funny how I started this comment by praising "The Darkness" and finished thrashing it to pieces.
2005-11-30
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