The Darkness consider name change

News
By ( Classic Rock ) published

Justin Hawkins says new lineup has rejuvenated the group

Justin Hawkins has revealed that The Darkness are considering changing the name of the band.

The group went through several lineup changes in the past year as they recorded and released their fourth album, Last Of Our Kind, including a split with drummer Ed Graham, the arrival and quick departure of Emily Dolan Davies, and – finally – the recruitment of Rufus Taylor, son of Queen legend Roger..

In the latest episode of Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast, the frontman reveals that the changes have inspired the group to consider adopting a new name.

Hawkins says: “We were toying with changing the name of the band. It’s a slightly controversial manoeuvre at this point. But I don’t know, we might have to run a competition on Facebook to change the name though.

“We thought about doing it for this album, because it does feel like it’s a new, what you might call a return to form, but there’s something different about it now. I think maybe it’s because we had a couple of personnel changes in the last year.

“It’s different and feels like it’s rejuvenated. I mean it obviously would be career suicide to throw everything away, everything that we’ve built up over the years, but there’s no reason we wouldn’t be able to rebuild.”

Hawkins further feels the rebuild process wouldn’t be complete without fan support, which The Darkness celebrated in the video for the album’s title track.

He says: “I mean every idea you have is either crowd-sourced or crowd-approved. You need to be addressing what your fans want because at the end of the day that’s what you’ve got.

“What we’re trying to harvest here is to have our fanbase have a sense of ownership over what we’re doing and if they name the band, that’s even better, isn’t it? It’s like when you adopt a homeless puppy, the first thing you do is give it a name. So we’re like the musical equivalent of a homeless puppy.”

The Darkness launch a series of North American shows this week with three dates in California and will play a full UK tour in November.