Permission To Land
- The Darkness
- Band Name: The Darkness
- Record Label: Atlantic
- Release Date: Sep 16, 2003
- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100It is that love, devotion, and unfaltering belief that makes 'Permission To Land' such an essential listen, and such a joy to behold. It is the sound of triumph.
-
100There's no way you won't be listening to this CD on repeat for anything less than two weeks straight.
-
90This is rock with a big fat drunken grin scrawled over its face in lurid red lipstick.
-
84What they do well might be best exemplified by "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", which most effectively pairs their sense of theatricality and grandiosity with their penchant for great pop hooks.
-
80Permission To Land is actually good enough to motivate more than a few curious, intrepid listeners to give their dusty old Dokken albums another spin.
-
80The Darkness swoop dangerously close to parody, but pull off the dizzying, sublime soprano hi-jinks of I Believe In A Thing Called Love, the deft pop-rock of Friday Night and Love On The Rocks WIth Ice's overbearing machismo with the grace of seasoned circus acrobats. [Aug 2003, p.98]
-
80The Darkness are genuinely in thrall to the power of stadium rock in all its bombastic, unreconstructed glory. [Sep 2003, p.97]
-
80The Darkness play old-fashioned metal with such elan that at times they ascend to pop music's Olympian heights. [Nov 2003, p.110]
-
Even though Permission to Land isn't quite as metal as its singles suggested it might be, the album is surprisingly good, especially considering how bad the band's '80s metal revival could have been.
-
80At a compact 38 minutes, Permission to Land is over before it gets irritating, leaving you with an impression of overwrought headache-rock fronted by a gale-force falsetto.
-
80When The Darkness make it work, which is very often, they pull it off with the most exuberance and joy that we've heard from a hard rock band in a very long time.
-
Campy? To be sure. Derivative? Absolutely. But cock-rock of this sheer magnitude and pomposity has been dormant at least since "Smells Like Teen Spirit" washed away "November Rain," so who really cares?
-
It’s just that combination of sincerity and an ability to emulate the sound of its heroes (and, in most cases, do so with more proficiency than those heroes themselves) that makes Permission to Land a fun, diverting trip through the (admittedly guilty) pleasures of a wildly excessive decade.
-
Just because it’s essentially heavy-metal karaoke, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy it.
-
70In all fairness, The Darkness aren’t just peddling 2003 versions of Unskinny Bop and Cherry Pie. They pride themselves on mixing in a bit of T&A humour with the right levels of lyrical wit, all to a foot stompin’, fist pumpin’ rock vibe, a la AC/DC.
-
70They might have a shelf life shorter than a pint of milk but, with a good tune underpinning each over-egged slice of rock pudding, are all the more thrilling for it. [Aug 2003, p.104]
-
Permission to Land is the first retro-metal album that's worth more than a momentary chuckle.
-
It's that subtle streak of accomplished mischief that separates The Darkness from the multitude of marginal bar bands that still play this stuff for real.
-
This is a dismal failure.