Gosh, The Darkness, how you’ve grown… AOR.

Everyone has a favourite Queen song – mine’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ – but nobody has a favourite Brian May song. It doesn’t work like that – Brian with Queen, great; Brian on his own writing songs to sell cars to fat 40-year-old insurance salesmen to headbang gently to while passing junction 14 of the M6, fuckawful. This, the properly retro-rocking quartet’s latest single from their dive-bombing (or is that ‘dire’ and ‘bombing’?) second album, One Way Ticket To Hell… And Back, sounds too close to a May solo effort to be any fun whatsoever. Granted, there’s an awesomely OTT riff two minutes in, but even one delivered by axeman extraordinaire May himself couldn’t polish this turd.

Remember when a new Darkness single meant sucking your balls up and high-kicking out the jams ‘til your catsuit came apart at the groin? Really wasn’t that long ago, was it? Shame how they grow up so fast these days…