By now, we're all familiar with The Darkness. The East Anglian cat-suit-clad glam-rockers have been a part of British music since they broke out with their 2003 debut album 'Permission To Land' and its Taylor Swift-doing-karaoke staple, 'I Believe In A Thing Called Love'. While most of this time has been revisiting their earliest hits, they've also been working away. From touring extensively - including a sold-out UK run this March - to popping out albums every few years, they've most importantly remained a bit of fun in an otherwise often po-faced rock landscape. But, getting to album eight has involved facing a lot of home truths.

For starters, 'Dreams On Toast' is The Darkness back to being a band. 2021's 'Motorheart' came together during the pandemic. Remote sessions and, as frontman and guitarist Justin Hawkins puts it, "Everybody getting a chance to play exactly what they wanted and then ignoring the phone if there were any notes," is the antithesis of The Darkness' alchemy.

So for its follow-up, they knew they had to get back to grips with being a band, in a room (at a selection of drummer Rufus Taylor's rock royalty dad Roger's global properties), as people – or, er, the tennis court. "When you're eating together, playing together...and I mean playing tennis sometimes...just in each other's company, we had a better idea of where everybody's heads were at, and collectively, what we wanted to do." Which is why 'Dreams On Toast' is, to Justin, a Darkness record "Focused in a completely different way." They've honed, they've adjusted, and are re-positioning themselves as a band ready for the future.

Justin, with brother Dan, Rufus, and longtime mustachio bassist Frankie Poulain, have done so by rooting themselves into this tongue-in-cheek rock'n'roll world of theirs - if studious opener 'Rock N Roll Party Cowboy' didn't confirm this already. They've dug down and struck gold in, well, themselves. "Ultimately, it's the personalities that should be the commodity, really, not the catsuits, not the guitar solos." Justin briefly pauses before adding with a smirk, "Although they are, obviously, amazing."

The first step in this new chapter was to throw away any preconceptions. "This is the first record where we properly deflated male vanity. None of us are pretending to be anything that we're not," Justin states. Still chock full of driving riffs and wild-eyed guitar solos, they're playful without taking the piss, ripping choruses built to fill the grandest of spaces; it's impossible to have a bad time whilst the four-piece gets down to business. Getting this lean, mean machine sound together was a feverish labour: "We've chased every song to the point where we've trimmed all the fat off it," he explains. "And if there's anything ambitious or lavish in the arrangement, it's justified."

One thing 'Dreams On Toast' doesn't heavily rely upon is Justin's famed falsetto. "I don't want it to be a vehicle for me to do acrobatics and stuff," he says. "The listening experience of this record is not as abrasive. It's definitely more comfortable." Admitting that previously they'd chase such abrasion like a cat hunting a chunky mouse, these days they're ready to let it scarper away in favour of the songs, well, just being songs. "I don't find that exciting to listen to. When I go back through our catalogue, I'm like, 'What? Why am I singing that up there?' I feel like it takes something away from the emotional dynamics of a listening experience if I'm always 100% - it's not doing the song justice."

It's recent single 'I Hate Myself' that Justin points to as a touchpoint for their attitude on this album. They're done with expectations both from themselves and from fans. "What's not to love if you're a Darkness fan?" he reasons. With its uplifting melody shadowing a more dark lyric set, as they've been wont to do, "It's just a Darkness song. It's exactly what we've always done. To listen to that and go, 'Oh, I like your old stuff better'. I'm like, 'Well, fuck you, then go and listen to the first record'. I don't care." What he does want, however, is for people to ask questions. To be intrigued by whatever The Darkness are doing. After all, the middle of the road is boring, and The Darkness are, if anything, defiantly opposed to such blandness. "I want everyone to go, 'Fuck, what is going on with these people?' And I want the music to be the answer to that. If you look at what we're playing and read the lyrics, that should be the statement we make. I don't think there should be any obligation to justify it afterwards."

The most important facet of this new era for the four-piece is how they're prepping themselves for their third decade as a band. They're being more open and honest with their direction. Ambition is no longer the word of the day. Where once they were ferociously chomping up every opportunity available (as well as, erm, some other things), these days they're hyper-focused on their lane. "We've all come around to the idea of ambition just being an ugly and unattractive thing, not too far away from desperation, really," Justin shrugs, "I don't like writing stuff that's broad." A needless statement, since their tunes have always sat outside of any inane potholes, instead causing a big ooft as they ploughed on forwards.

"I don't like trying to pander to the masses. We're not McDonald's, you know what I mean?" Justin reasons. "To appreciate what we're doing, I think you have to get past a certain stigmatisation of having been a successful rock band, and there's a temptation to look at us all as washed-up, middle-aged rockers, which I get - it's totally fine. But you've got two choices. You can either spend your life denying that, or you can spend your life exploring that and using it for creativity. A lot of the songs on this record are talking about being this age and trying to figure out where we fit in as men and as individuals and as a band."

Fitting in was never on their agenda. Their first record was created with a burning drive to break out of their coastal cage by sticking to their guns - 'Permission To Land' was less of a request and more of a warning. "The drive was because if we don't do that, there's no next step. We don't know if it's going to fail, but unless we do this, we'll never know," Justin remembers. "And now the drive is different because we have an existing fan base that has plateaued... and that's cool. It means we're a cult band. But I want to do things that reframe people's perception of The Darkness, whether that's for the better or the worse. Stagnating, that's unappealing; the ambition that we have now is to be challenging."

They know theirs is a well-earned space on the mantle of British music. With eight albums behind them, The Darkness have an arsenal of hell for leather rock, but that's not to say it's all gold. "The nature of it is that it's hit and miss," Justin muses, "and it's the same of all the art forms. I think your favourite director has made some bad films after they've made great ones."

It's why the legacy of The Darkness, to Justin, is a moot point. It's not about having the grandest back catalogue because, as he puts it, "there's fucking stinkers in everybody's catalogue. There's bad stuff, and there's good stuff. The bands that I respect and appreciate, some bits of their work move me, and some bits leave me cold. It's just the way it is."

Looking back upon his own band's output now, they've seen their debut sail past its twentieth anniversary, and their second, 2005's 'One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back' following suit this year, "When I listen back to our catalogue, there are huge bits of it that I wish we hadn't bothered doing," he admits. "But we weren't in the right space to create something great at the time, and I'm cool with that. I think a legacy is missteps, you know? Downright abysmal stuff and amazing stuff."

Whatever your perception of The Darkness, one irrefutable fact is that they're grafters. Since day one, from the self-funded debut to gallantly returning after a hiatus in the early 10s, they've been figuring their place out in the world - often seen supporting an array of artists from Lady Gaga to Ed Sheeran, as well as festival slots at Latitude and Download - while getting the job done. So, having been deep in the rockstar game for decades now, from a Number 1 debut album to a bonafide Christmas classic ('Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)'), and all the murky excesses in between, has this life been what they expected? "There are fewer helicopters involved than I expected?" Justin smirks, before divulging further: "It's easy to pretend that you saw it coming, but I had no idea. I just didn't see it coming. You can't expect somebody to be prepared for that. We were just trying to do something defiant because it was so unfashionable, and it was the music that we loved growing up."

They're a band that couldn't have come from any other place on this isle than their seaside homestead. The Darkness was a project born out of needing and wanting more, and to make a statement - something they continue to do to this day. "We'd had stuff like grunge, Britpop, and nu-metal. It was anything but the kind of rock that we were playing, and it was frustrating, so we were like, 'Fuck it. Let's do it'. And then this happened."