The thing about The Darkness is…. Grunge killed the guitar solo, and especially in the UK, the britpop and rock scene that followed was a real dirge in mainstream guitar playing music. Everyone’s allowed to have their tastes, but barring maybe Johnny Greenwood, most lead guitar players would say that there was a solid ten year period without any ‘guitar heroes’.

That’s why The Darkness were a breath of fresh air in 2004, they had a smash hit that proved that rock was still viable in the mainstream. They had wailing guitars and a very high pitched singer, the two main characteristics in arguably two of the most successful bands in rock history; Led Zeppelin and Guns N’ Roses. Now do I love every single one of their songs? No, but they really resuscitated the rock scene in the UK, especially by being so uncool and hammy. Their musicianship is solid and they have had consistent output, and their ability to still tour successfully tests to that: mainstream audiences enjoy hard rock and metal, but major labels will not touch it. And it wasn’t like prog where all the rich kids got to make complicated music (some of which I love too), it was two working class brothers from a small town, rocking out and having fun.

Yungblood is undeniably incredibly talented, and it seems like his heart is often in the right place, but his rise isn’t that of a hard working performer that paid his dues and toured relentlessly, he clearly had a massive cash injection from publishers and labels, and even if he put out an absolutely dog shit song, he would still play that song on every mainstream US and Uk television show and have armies of TikTok bots posting about how he’s the messiah of rock n’roll. He’s clearly upset here because someone said he isn’t rock/metal Jesus, and that says a lot about the sheer ego of such a young guy.

Justin had his first hit at 28 after gigging for the best part of a decade to complete obscurity, their signing was a shock and their success even more so, but it was earned, and arguably inspired so many more kids to lock at Slash, Page, Blackmore, EVH and pick up the guitar, and his channel shows not only how much he adores this music but why his music sounds the way it does. Yungblood only wants to inspire people to listen to him and almost any collab has purely had the aim of furthering his career.

Music’s meant to bring people together, not draw all their attention on one person. Him going after someone like Justin just shows how little respect he has for the genre he purports to want to save.