Rocks

All six of the albums Hanoi Rocks made in their original incarnation – Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks, Oriental Beat, Self Destruction Blues, Back to the Mystery City, Two Steps from the Move, and All Those Wasted Years – are packaged together, one album to one CD, in this straightforward six-CD set. There are no extras, just the albums as they were originally released, though there's a 12-page booklet with a solid history of the band and numerous (if small) reproductions of sleeves from their original releases. It's too much at once even for many fans, but for the more dedicated of that lot, it's a handy encapsulation of their primary recorded work. Hearing all of it does make it clear that, although they're often classified as a heavy metal band, they might be more accurately pegged as a hard rock band with substantial traces of glam and pop (and even some bar band blues-rock) along with the metal.

Hanoi Rocks was a Finnish rock band formed in 1979. They were the first Finnish band to chart in the UK and they were also popular in Japan. The band broke up in June 1985 after the drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley had died in a car accident during their first US tour in December 1984. Original vocalist Michael Monroe and guitarist Andy McCoy reunited in 2001 with a new line-up of Hanoi Rocks until 2009. Although musically closer to traditional rock n' roll and punk, Hanoi Rocks have been cited as a major influence in the glam metal genre for bands such as Guns N' Roses, Skid Row and Poison…

Hanoi Rocks resolutely break no bounds on the band's third studio effort, Self Destruction Blues, but then again, anyone expecting that was in the wrong place; those expecting obvious nods to the likes of Ziggy-era Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and the like, though, would be in heaven…