Garbage Days Revisited #15 (part 2): Hanoi Rocks - "Twelve Shots On The Rocks" (2003)

 

"They couldn't mess with my band - my band's a rock 'n' roll band!" - Hanoi Rocks - Obscured

So here's where we pick up the story following the Mike Monroe GDR column yesterday - if you've not read that yet then I'd humbly suggest you click on the link above and give it a quick read first as it'll make this thing flow a bit better. Don't worry, I'll still be here when you get back.

All caught up? Good. Let's begin.

So literally a few days after I'd bought Mike's excellent Whatcha Want album, the news came out that Hanoi Rocks were reforming and I think it was this that finally prompted me to give that cheapo greatest hits compilation of theirs that I'd got a few years previously (see part 1 of this article) another listen. This time, I got it. I think my main problem first time out is I'd expected Hanoi to be a straightforward glam/sleaze band like G'n'R or Poison or Skid Row and they very much weren't - there was always an engaging undercurrent of weirdness with this band's back catalogue which put them in a very different ballpark to most of the bands who'd subsequently be described as their contemporaries. Although they could play it fairly straight when they wanted to such as on songs like Malibu Beach Nightmare, Motorvatin' and their cover of CCR's Up Around The Bend (the nearest they got to a hit here in the UK), the likes of Mental Beat, Taxi Driver and especially the awesome six minute tour de force of Tooting Bec Wreck put them closer to the sheer chaos of the Stooges than any sort of metalhead tendencies.

The irony of this is that Twelve Shots On The Rocks, the band's comeback album, is arguably their most accessible. I remember a couple of friends who liked the band griping when it came out that it sounded more like a Mike Monroe solo album as it's much more straightforward than say Back To Mystery City or Oriental Beat but I really like the immediacy of it. When opener Obscured burst into life, this really did feel like a band with a statement to make.

The highlights keep coming thick and fast on this one from the harmonica honking spite of Whatcha Want through the lurching Gypsy Boots (which is definitely pure Andy McCoy) to the slinky Moonlight Dance and the pure breakneck thrills of A Day Late, A Dollar Short and a well-executed cover of the Heavy Metal Kids' excellent Delirious. Hell, even the big November Rain style power ballad In My Darkest Moment is way better than it had any right to be.

Although a few fans were griping about the absence of Nasty Suicide and Sami Yaffa, I still think Twelve Shots On The Rocks is a great album which holds its own against the group's more celebrated albums from their first incarnation (similar to one of Hanoi's main influences the New York Dolls and their One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This album which I'm sure we'll cover in due course in this here column). Unfortunately they wouldn't manage to really nail it this well again in their eight year second run. The group's two subsequent albums, 2005's Another Hostile Takeover and 2007's Street Poetry were decent rather than brilliant, both with a few worthy additions to the group's glittering back catalogue but both also with a bit of filler as well.

The group would split for a second time in 2008 with McCoy again going back to various projects, most of which I have to plead ignorance to I'm afraid. However, Monroe would resume his solo career recruiting an all star band including a returning Sami Yaffa, guitarist Steve Conte who Yaffa had been playing with in the 21st century version of the New York Dolls, ex-Danzig drummer Karl Rockfist and none other than Ginger Wildheart on rhythm guitar. Monroe and Ginger would collaborate on the excellent Sensory Overdrive album but a homesick Ginger would leave the band soon afterwards, initially replaced by Dregen from the Backyard Babies for 2013's Horns and Halos who would then return to his day job to be replaced by ex-Black Halos/Amen/Yo-Yo's/Loyalties guitarist Rich Jones for 2015's Blackout States and 2019's One Man Gang. It goes without saying that all of these are well worth a listen.

I'm sure I'll get around to covering Mike's post-Hanoi Rocks Mk2 output in more detail in either this column or SFTJ in the future at some point but for now, I'd definitely argue the case that Twelve Shots On The Rocks is Hanoi Rocks' most underrated album. Okay so it's not quite up to the standards of Back To Mystery City, Oriental Beat or Two Steps From The Move but I'd argue that it's not too far behind them and, despite Sami and Nasty's absence, is more than worthy of bearing the band name. Definitely a bit of an under-appreciated gem that's worth seeking out.