As previously reported, the Darkness are returning to North America for a tour next month, the band's first stateside outing since 2004. Frontman Justin Hawkins and his guitarist brother Dan Hawkins told Loudwire recently that the band is hard at work on a new album that is tentatively set to drop in the spring.

"Yeah, so we’re in the studio even as we speak," said Justin. "I think we’ve got nine of the required songs done or finished, all sounding shiny and good and we’ve got about two weeks of recording in January and bits of it is already going off to be mixed even as we speak so it’s kind of nearly finished now."

The sound is distinctively the Darkness, but it's got a very natural sound, said Dan Hawkins.

"We’re kind of trying to get back through the more organic sort of rock sound of the Darkness, hence we’ve kind of done a joint production with Nick Brine,' explains Dan. "He’s an engineer that’s worked with us a lot rather than going for a big-name producer, we decided to do it ourselves as per the first record really.

He adds, "You know, we kind of we just wanted to develop the songs and make sure they were really spot-on and kind of basically take a minimal approach across the board apart from when we need to go really over the top so yeah, I guess it’s kind of following-on from the first record rather than the second I suppose, you know, which was kind of more about the production than the songs probably."

The Darkness' North American trek kicks off Feb. 1 in Toronto and runs through a Feb. 21 show in San Francisco. See the full list of dates here.

 

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