In the late 1970s, in the wake of the punk rock revolution of (to name but a few key bands) the Sex Pistols, The Clash and the Ramones, a fascinating sound emerged that was dubbed New Wave. The movement was simple: take the energy & spirit of punk, but pair it with more sophisticated chord sequences, melodies & musical equipment (guitar pedals, drum machines & synthesisers to be precise), and bring the punk sound to the masses. From this new genre emerged some of the greatest bands of all time, the likes of The Jam, Squeeze, The Police and U2. Cut to the mid-2000s, and an eerily similar movement began to take shape….

The early-2000s kicked off a punk-esque movement now commonly known as the Garage Rock Revival, with acts like The Strokes, The White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs bringing guitar music to the forefront of popular culture again with a brand of rough, ready and highly melodic rock. By the mid-2000s, it was clear that this group of bands had dropped a massive bomb on the music world, and the aftershocks began to ripple into a New Wave Revival of sorts, with bands such as Kings Of Leon, Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight once again taking the energy of the Garage Rock movement and sophisticating it up. There was one band, however, who would go on to become the defining band of this era of guitar music, and that band is The Killers.

From the first few bars of opener “Jenny Was A Friend of Mine,” you can hear that The Killers are no ordinary garage rock band. Sure, the production is wonderfully raw, but the playing & songwriting is immaculate. You’ve got these incredible, marching band drum rolls from Ronnie Vannucci Jr., this brutally attacking yet beautifully melodic bass playing from Mark Stoermer, this open-string-heavy, exquisitely voiced guitar part from Dave Keuning, and then you’ve got the star of the show, Mr. Brandon Flowers. From his infectiously modern synth hooks, to his show-stopping voice, Flowers brings star quality to every inch of this record. He’s simply a born frontman, someone you would follow into battle every time he called upon you. He brings the X Factor to this album and elevates the songs to the stadium level that they ended up reaching.

The opening 5 songs on Hot Fuss are arguably the 5 greatest anthems of this era. “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine,” “Mr. Brightside,” “Smile Like You Mean It,” “Somebody Told Me” and “All These Things That I’ve Done”…I mean come on, that’s an insane run of wall-to-wall classics right there. After this, the hits make way for some exceptional deep cuts, giving us a taste of Flowers’ wonderful storytelling abilities, whether that’s the tale of homoerotic infatuation for a classmate in “Andy, You’re A Star,” the dark murder balladry of “Midnight Show” or the almost showtune-esque story of rock & roll aspiration that is “Glamourous Indie Rock & Roll.”

As The Killers got bigger, the band changed track, eschewing the English-sounding feel of this first album for a deeply American sound and never quite going back to the roots of this project, but the influence of this album will always remain massive on the band and on the culture at large. If The Strokes brought guitar music back for a generation, The Killers managed to take that ball and run with it right to the top of the mountain. This is a once-in-a-generation type of record.

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