His "worst experience as a support act." That's what The Darkness lead singer Justin Hawkins has to say about opening for Disturbed in his own YouTube series. His sentiment largely stems from an incident during which an audience member at a London concert threw a piece of chewing gum directly into Hawkins' mouth while he was singing. When he got angry at the crowd, Hawkins said he got nothing but backlash from Disturbed's David Draiman.
Hawkins explained, “I was singing [makes choking sound]. It was just a brilliant shot; I had to respect it, really. And then afterwards, David Draiman wasn’t very pleased with me. I don’t know; I think I may have issued an admonishment to the throng, which didn’t go down very well with him. But what are you gonna do? Who gives a f**k? I’m just kidding [at the time].”
He continued, “When things like that happen… If a band is supporting my band and then our crowd is not very nice to them, I would always go and apologize. That didn’t happen with Disturbed. I think it actually had the opposite effect and they were angry with us. But… not my problem.”
Heavy Consequence reports that in 2004, Draiman told Metal Edge [via Blabbermouth], “To be perfectly honest with you, I think that The Darkness is a joke, and that’s, unfortunately, exactly what the world wants. The world wants rock bands to be idiots. The world wants rock bands to be these bumbling buffoons, these morons who made fun of themselves and their music and their art and don’t take themselves seriously in any way.”
He added, “And it’s funny, I wouldn’t even go ahead and say anything about them per se, unless they had already laid down the gauntlet. I heard of late that they have decided to start slinging shit in our direction, that we are an example of one of the bands that they’re completely against. That to them, we symbolize this whole wave of nu-metal that is near its death. Are you f**king kidding me? The irony is that they opened up for us in London at Brixton Academy, and here they are talking shit about us. I like [the song “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”]. I have nothing against the song. I can’t argue that it’s a catchy goddamn song, but it’s not metal. It’s pop-rock. How dare they call themselves metal? That’s not metal. It’ll never be metal.”