Hanoi Rocks are the Finnish peacocks who crash-landed glam rock into punk’s dirty ashtray and made it sparkle. These mad bastards took the trashy swagger of the New York Dolls, the melodic chaos of early Clash, and the suicidal romanticism of every drunk poet with eyeliner, then threw it all onstage like a Molotov cocktail filled with hairspray. Strap on your snakeskin boots and pour one out for the saints of sleaze, because this is their holy trinity.

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#3 – Back To Mystery City (1983)

This is the sound of a band strutting into its own mythology. Back to Mystery City slithers in all glitter and danger, like a drag queen with a switchblade. Michael Monroe wails like a wounded angel falling off a barstool, Andy McCoy’s guitar licks sound like they’re being played through a cloud of cocaine and heartbreak, and every song feels like it could end in either an orgy or a police report. “Malibu Beach Nightmare” and “Ice Cream Summer” are perfect melodic anthems for beautiful losers who never made it home. This glam is the beautiful rot beneath the makeup.

2. Two Steps From The Move (1984)

Two Steps From The Move is where Hanoi Rocks perfected chaos into art. Producer Bob Ezrin (yeah, that Ezrin—Alice Cooper’s partner in crime, KISS’s drill sergeant, and Pink Floyd’s vision director) gave them the sonic gasoline they’d been begging for, and the result is pure, tragic brilliance. “Up Around the Bend” rips open Creedence like a hotwired Cadillac, while “Underwater World” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” mix sleaze and sorrow in equal measure. You can hear the exhaustion in Monroe’s howl as it shows the signs living too fast, laughing too loud, and realizing the sunset is actually the end. This is the sound of the fuse burning out right before the crash.

1. Oriental Beat (1982)

Hanoi Rocks were born in the gutter, and Oriental Beat is the sound of fucking madmen still believing they could live forever. This is a pure punk and glam combustion that was too raw for those pussies at MTV, and too beautiful the safety pin wearing assholes. Every track sounds like it’s trying to seduce chaos itself. Songs like “Motorvatin’,” “Teenangels Outsiders,” and “Don’t You Ever Leave Me”are a lipstick-smeared love letter to danger. Andy McCoy’s guitar howls like a junkyard cat in heat, while Monroe screams like a preacher baptizing sinners in whiskey and glitter. This album is a manifesto for the damned, the soundtrack to mascara running in the rain.

They burned bright, burned fast, and left ashes that reek of lost nights and cheap perfume. But the dream ended in a horrible mess of twisted metal and blood on the pavement when drummer Razzle was killed in a car crash with Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil. This resulted in the band’s reckless joy turning into rock’s saddest requiem. Hanoi Rocks were a meteor made of goddamn beautiful sequins and bad decisions, tearing through the sky and leaving behind the blueprint for Guns N’ Roses, the Manic Street Preachers, and every mascara-streaked dreamer who ever screamed into a cracked mirror.

So go dig up these records, crank them till your your ears bleed and eyesight fails and remember that glam rock didn’t die—it just overdosed in Helsinki, crashed in Hollywood, and kept on dancing.

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