The Darkness at the Metro | Concert review

You can be forgiven for assuming cock-rocking British band the Darkness was a Spinal Tap–esque joke: the video for "Growing on Me," off its 2003 debut album Permission to Land, features a pterodactyl humping a spaceship, which births the band members (not to mention, the song itself seemingly equates unrequited love with pubic lice). And then there's frontman Justin Hawkins's sartorial tastes, which range from bell-sleeved, chest-exposing catsuits to armless, chest-exposing catsuits. And then there's the song simply titled "Knockers." But when you see the Darkness live, any lingering doubts you might have about the band's legitimacy, or talent, are quickly stripped away.

Playing to a sold-out crowd Saturday at the Metro, Hawkins and co. (which includes his brother, Dan, on guitar) delivered what is easily one of the top three shows I've ever seen. Wiry and tireless, Hawkins is a natural showman: one minute leading the rabid crowd in a call and response of mother and fucker for the song "Get your Hands off My Woman" (motherfucker), the next doing a split-leg handstand, and the next performing a face-melting guitar solo. But his most impressive skill is his voice: a screeching falsetto that never missed a note and sounds even better live than on the band's recordings. Hawkins, only leaving the stage briefly twice for costume changes (naturally), led the band through the highlights of its two-album catalog ("Hazel Eyes" and "Giving It Up" were among the most electric), as well as a few songs from the forthcoming album, the band's first since 2006, including the single "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us." Hawkins quit the band that year to deal with substance-abuse issues (and apparently to cultivate a Salvador Dali–like masterpiece of facial hair), and now, sober for five years, he seems to truly appreciate his second chance at stardom, thanking the crowd multiple times for being "fucking awesome" and even putting enough trust in his fans to scamper up scaffolding on the side of the stage, climb onto a PA stack at balcony level, and freefall into their arms.

In a dream double bill orchestrated by the ghost of Freddie Mercury, the Cincinnati outfit Foxy Shazam opened the show, with the frontman Eric Nally sporting facial hair in the vein of Guy Fawkes, and freckles and pigtails like a testosterone-popping Punky Brewster. Nally was the ringmaster of a frenetic musical freak show, throwing out quips like "Clap your hands, you stupid white people!" and "Did you come yet? Because we gotta go," while the trumpet player tossed his horn high in the air, the fantastically chin-bearded keyboardist crowd-surfed while still playing and the rest of the band wailed on their instruments to produce an almost unclassifiable brand of rollicking rock. Odd doesn't begin to cover it but, like the Darkness, Foxy Shazam could convince the faithless that rock & roll is alive and well. And wearing a codpiece.