The Darkness, the British retro-rock yelpers who apparently claim Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce as fans, are getting ready to return with their new LP Dreams On Toast next year, and we’ve already posted lead single “The Longest Kiss.” Today, the band’s attention-magnet singer Justin Hawkins is in an awkward position: His band has a new song called “I Hate Myself,” and it’s coming out just a few days after he defended his criticism of Liam Payne, the former One Direction member who just died, possibly by suicide.

We should probably deal with the Liam Payne thing first, right? Liam Payne, the former One Direction member, passed away in October after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina; Buenos Aires police say that he jumped. Before Payne’s passing, Hawkins made fun of Payne on his Justin Hawkins Rides Again YouTube channel, calling Payne “a fucking muppet.” The snarky video is a year old, and it’s pretty much 15 minutes of shit-talk and digressions.

In a recent YouTube video, Justin Hawkins answers questions and comments from fans. He says, for instance, that it wasn’t him in a photo at a Diddy party — must’ve been some other rock guy — and that he liked the couple of Chappell Roan songs that he heard in a taxi once. Near the end of the clip, Hawkins responds to criticism from bereft Liam Payne songs, some of whom tell him to delete his previous video and one of which claims he has “blood on [his] hands.” In response, Payne says:

I didn’t see that Liam situation coming. I mean, I didn’t pay enough attention to his career to recognize that there were signs of mental instability. I just thought it was somebody who wasn’t coping with fame or was trying to big themselves up or come across as something that was a little bit inauthentic, and that’s what I was highlighting, really. I don’t think I actually said — it was just watching some videos where he was obviously behaving like a bellend, as simple as that. There’s videos of just about every artist in the world who hits a low ebb or on a bad day where they get interviewed and they make themselves seem like pricks. There just seems to be more of them of Liam at my disposal for that particular episode.

But I didn’t take it down, and the reason I didn’t take it down is why would I do that? Why would I pretend I hadn’t observed those things? It’s really sad what happened to him, but at the end of the day it’s not gonna change my view on those specific behaviors. Everybody’s complex. There’s layers to this. Laughing at some stuff that’s laughable — that’s what I do, and that’s what I’ll always do.

As for the new Darkness song “I Hate Myself,” it’s a fired-up power-pop tune about realizing that your relationship is over and it’s your fault. Justin Hawkins calls it “joyous, raucous celebration of self-loathing.” Catchy tune! Great horn stabs! Listen below.

Dreams On Toast is out 3/28 via Cooking Vinyl.