At the beginning of  Welcome to the Darkness, frontman Justin Hawkins, he of the self-lacerating sharp wit and an equally dazzling trademark unitards, lays out what was allegedly his British rock band’s master plan all along: basically, release a massive debut album, follow it up with a slightly disappointing sophomore record, go on hiatus, and then stage a fabulous return.

He then quips, “The ‘fabulous return’ part hasn’t happened yet.”

The problem is, the Darkness’s documentary ends too prematurely, in 2023 — and during the past few years, the Darkness have indeed made a fabulous return to the mainstream. Hawkins was the breakout star of the Taylor Hawkins (no relation) tribute concert at London’s Wembley Stadium, practically upstaging Wolfgang Van Halen, AC/DC’s Brian Johnston, and even Dave Grohl with his otherworldly five-octave tenor and glass-shattering falsetto. The Darkness’s smash “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” then shot back to No. 1, after a clip of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce belting it at the U.S. Open Women’s Final went viral. Justin’s music-critique podcast and YouTube channel, the aptly titled Justin Hawkins Rides Again, is currently an internet sensation. And this year’s Dreams on Toast, the Darkness’s independently released eighth album (and sixth since returning from a seven-year hiatus in 2012) recently went to No. 2 in the U.K. — making it the band’s highest chart placement since their huge debut, 2003’s Permission to Land.

“Dan [Hawkins, Justin’s bandmate and younger brother] said in the documentary that one of his greatest fears for the band was if we become just a nostalgia-circuit band,” says Justin, speaking from the familiar studio where all his podcast magic happens. He reveals that the Darkness received plenty of lucrative offers to play retro-themed package tours and festivals over the years, and he was asked to be on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! and other British C-list reality shows many times, but even when the band was really struggling, he wasn’t tempted.

“There’s no such thing as easy money. In fact, I’d say the price would come that you would be condemned at that point to just being a heritage act. And there’s no way back from that,” he says. “You’re very, very unlikely to get a second chance. And we’ve actually forced that issue. Our second chance has been through determination and years of work. … You are lucky if you get one chance; I don’t think everybody gets that, to be honest. So yeah, I just think it’s work and belief.”

When the Darkness exploded onto the scene 22 years ago, standing out like a glittering thumb among the nu-metal, indie/garage, and pop acts of the aughts, they had many detractors who dismissed them as some ‘80s-revival novelty act, but also many supporters who declared them the new saviors of rock ‘n’ roll. “Rock is always in peril, in need of saving. It’s always tied to the railway track, isn’t it?” muses Justin. And no band has really come along since, at least not in such a grand and ostentatious fashion, to take up that mantle. But even though the Darkness are making some of their best rock records right now and cracking the U.K top five, he fears that the genre might be beyond “saving” — at least in terms of becoming youth culture’s dominant genre again. And he has a few theories as to why.

“I sound like a really old guy when I say that, because I am a really old guy,” Justin, now age 50, ponders, speaking with the same authority and thoughtfulness that makes Justin Hawkins Rides Again such a much-listen for diehard music fans. “It isn’t going to be the Darkness, I know that much, but whoever it is that saves [rock], that’s great. But rock ‘n’ roll has no chance of bothering the charts in the same way it used to do until there’s a change in attitude and people are more open to the idea of using that sort of soundscape in a different way.

“I think when people are trying to sort of push rock forwards, there’s a resistance among people who like the oldest style, the bawdy lyrics and the things you shouldn’t be able to do and doesn’t fit with our society now. I think rock is really sort of entrenched in, ‘Well, this is what real rock ‘n’ roll sounds like, and anything else doesn’t really count, and I want it to be small and special. I don’t want it to be mainstream.’ … It’s almost like holding onto that core, which is of another time half a century ago, really.

“But it’s not going to be like in the ‘80s, when charts were dominated by people with huge poodle perms and playing guitars. It won’t be like that again, unless instead of singing those sort of aspirational songs about girls, girls, girls and all this sort of stuff, we have some things that apply to the current climate. Unless you make rock music that speaks to the experience of living in the here and now, instead of focusing on the sounds and the attitudes of the ‘80s and ‘70s, it has no chance. It needs to be speaking to the young folk of today.”

That being said, Justin does notice his influence in today’s crop of rock ‘n’ roll newbies, even if some of those younger artists don’t give the Darkness proper credit. “There’s a certain stigma to admitting an influence, outside of the sort of ones that are really obvious. There’s always a reluctance, unless you’ve got the balls to actually be honest. … I see people with the little mullets, their mustaches, wearing their catsuits, and I know they’ve referenced me. I know they have, but they don’t come out and say it,” he says.

When asked if he’s referring to a certain pop star who performed with his idol Brian May at Coachella this year, Justin nods affirmatively. “By the way, I’ve got no issue with [Benson Boone]. But I know that his stylist referenced early the Darkness for that suit. And that’s not me saying that because I can feel it in the universe — it’s because I know [Boone’s] stylist. I know that this is what happened. Yeah, I’d love it if people would go, ‘Yes, it’s because of that guy.’ That’d be nice. … But I think it’s happening a little bit more lately. That’s one of the reasons why I love the Struts. At least they’re prepared to actually admit that they love the Darkness, and I think that’s cool.”

Against all odds, the Darkness have stayed the course and outlasted music trends, even when there were diminishing returns (as Justin snarks on the Dream on Toast anthem “Walking Through Fire,” they “never stopped making hit albums, it’s just that no one buys them anymore”). And they’ve not only survived the ups and down of the fickle music business, but various health issues (like Dan’s battle with testicular cancer at age 31, and Justin’s risky vocal surgery for a polyp he believes he developed while repeatedly straining to sing the 2015 track “Open Fire”). And of course, there have been Justin’s well-documented substance abuse problems, and although he refrains from discussing that much in this interview, instead cheekily referring to “a friend of mine called ‘Jason Hawkwind’ who used to do a lot of drugs years and years ago. … This is not me, obviously, can I just reassert that? Because I’m going to have to come into America at some point!” (The Darkness’s Dreams on Toast U.S. tour launches this week.)

And through it all, the beating rock ‘n’ roll heart of the band, and of their new documentary, has been Justin and Dan’s bond, which is the complete opposite of other famous feuding musical siblings like Oasis’s Liam and Noel Gallagher, the Kinks’Ray and Dave Davies, or the Black Crowes’ Chris and Rich Robinson. “We’re a formidable team. It’s funny now, because those traditional musical or creative brother relationships don’t apply to us,” says Justin. “It’s not like that — we don’t even bicker about who does guitar solos or anything like that.”

In fact, the most poignant scenes in the Welcome to the Darkness are when Dan gets choked up talking about how thrilled and relieved he is to be reunited with Justin (after Justin quit the group in 2007 to battle his addiction and other demons, and the two didn’t even speak for two years), or the moments when Justin expresses his deep regret over disappointing his brother. And the funniest part of the film is most definitely the priceless footage of Justin giving the best-man speech at Dan’s wedding, which demonstrates the dark Darkness humor that has kept the band going since they reconvened for their comeback album Hot Cakes 13 years ago.

Dan had beat testicular cancer a few years prior to getting married and had had one of his testicles removed… so, Justin of course decided to perform at Dan’s wedding accompanied a Jim Henson-style giant puppet testicle. “Towards the end of the speech, I was saying that everybody in the room, we’ve all wondered what happened to the mutated testicle that had to be removed. And then I announced that he was here today, and I had a puppet of a testicle, which sprayed semen out of the top of it from a special device inside,” Justin chuckles. “And the puppet and I sang ‘2 Become 1’ by the Spice Girls. It’s just simple maths, really. And it was beautiful. It really was.”

What didn’t make it into Welcome to the Darkness, Justin reveals, was additional wedding reception footage of “a bit when I’m talking about sibling rivalry, and there’s a photograph of us naked and I’ve used Photoshop to enhance a certain part of my anatomy. And I just leave it out there for ages, with people crying, children crying,” he laughs. “When I had the picture of me with the enormous appendage up on the screen, one of my sister-in-law’s relatives, who was in her advancing years at the time, was asking me if I wanted to sit down and take the weight off.”

Not all families would enjoy such an R-rated tribute, but Justin shrugs, “That’s just who we are, though.” And that humor has always come through in the Darkness’s music, even during their lowest times. “I don’t think we enjoy hearing ourselves whine or moan. There are [artists] who are great at that and I really enjoy listening to stuff that’s just full of despair, but I like it when there’s some sort of twist.”

And the joyful glow-up that Justin has undergone in recent years, which has coincided with the Darkness’s hard-earned renaissance, cannot be ignored. “I eat differently. I exercise. I don’t drink. I gave up smoking as well. My last vice was tobacco,” he says. He’s also now happily partnered up with Belgian-born musician Désirée Mishoe, aka May the Muse<, who he met after he was intrigued by her “really emotive vocal” on the soundtrack for the German series Dark, reached out to work with her, “and then sparks flew and it was magic.” A true story about their morning smooch in a Scottish orchard inspired the ELO-style Dreams on Toast romp “The Longest Kiss,” but even though Justin sings, “I think I found my wife” in that song’s chorus, he clarifies they are not legally wed — so, Dan won’t get the chance to give an R-rated speech at Justin’s own wedding any time soon.

“[Mishoe] is my wife in every respect. Not legally. The government hasn’t got involved yet,” Justin says. “I’ve had a fairly awful experience with actual marriage, but we are just life partners. So, it kind of works in exactly the same way, but without the looming specter. … It’s nice to have that sort of freedom with somebody because you love them, not because you’re obliged to legally.”

And so, with the band in a great place both professionally and personally, they’re going to keep soldiering on, whether or not their genre of choice ever “bothers the charts” again. When the Darkness played a glorious hometown show at London’s Wembley Arena the day after Dreams on Toast came out, they actually rallied the crowd to buy the album in order to block Mumford & Son from going to No. 1 that week (Justin even amusingly led the sold-out crowd in a spirited “Fuck Mumford & Sons!” chant), and while Dreams on Toast ultimately stalled at No. 2, that was still a triumph — considering that at one time Justin says “people thought I’d been dead for a few years, including myself,” and many fairweather fans had written the band off long ago.

“[Charts are] the sort of thing that I usually don’t care about. I wouldn’t even be able to tell you what number the last few albums went in at, because I don’t care,” says Justin. “But suddenly it was something that I wanted, and it was something that seemed like it was in reach. And we didn’t do it on this occasion, but what was it, our eighth studio album? So, yeah, there’s a couple more left in us, I think.”