4/10/2008 Hot Leg @ The Purple Turtle

Subject	Hot Leg @ The Purple Turtle
DateCreated	11/2/2008 9:18:00 AM
PostedDate	10/4/2008
	This promises to be an interesting show. Not surprisingly, the Purple Turtle is packed. The monthly Stay Beautiful club as this venue always gets a good turnout, but sometimes a band that's a bit special will ram the place - this is one of those nights. I've already seen the other Darkness offshoot Stone Gods a couple of times and been quite impressed, so I'm interested to see what Justin's new band is like. Although his brother Dan's band is effectively The Darkness without Justin, Stone Gods have moved on and actually sound very little like their previous band. Justin however has apparently decided 'If it ain't broke - don't fix it' and from the minute Hot Leg take to the stage it's pretty much 'business as usual'. Crunching AC/DC style riffs and stratopheric vocals abound! Although this is an all new band with an all new set of songs, what you get is effectively the 'The Darkness Mk 2' - even though the bass player looks like Wurzel from Motörhead! The AC/DC influence remains strong in the band's sound (vocals apart) and Justin teases us at one point by playing the classic intro to 'Back In Black'.  Fans of The Darkness who don't find Stone Gods are quite their thing are going to love this band. Pretty much everything people liked about The Darkness is here - the overblown pomp and showmanship, the camp irony, it's all still there. On the other hand, all the people who hated The Darkness are going to hate Hot Leg too for exactly the same reasons. If you just want loud guitars, an entertaining ROCK show, and you really miss The Darkness then this is definitely the band for you. So far, they don't seem to have written any songs as good as the Darkness classics, but it's still early days for Hot Leg and it took Justin's previous band years of hard work before they finally became an 'overnight success' with their first (and best) album. Justin has dubbed this style of music his new band plays as 'Man Rock' - whatever that means! However, as far as image goes there seems to be a strong Manowar influence - see Justin 'Taking the salute' in a very theatrical fashion! In spite of this being a new band with a new set, at the end of the show Justin teases the crowd with a very familiar riff (more than slightly similar to the intro to the new G'N'R song 'Chinese Democracy) and says "Do you want to hear a Darkness song?" The audience response is all too predictable and the band launch into 'Do You Believe In A Thing Called Love'. Everybody goes home happy. Apart from me - I head off to Decadence and go home happy, but somewhat the worse for wear several hours later...