Back after five years spent recovering from drug addiction, cult fame, and the nasty burns one accumulates from using one’s rear end as a launching pad for bottle rockets night after night, Hank von Helvete looked none the worse for wear a week ago Wednesday at the Webster Theatre in Hartford as Turbonegro opened for rabid Turbo fans Queens of the Stone Age. Suggestively caressing his ample, hairy belly, Hank looked like something out of Rob Halford’s wet dreams: black top hat, black fur-lined cape, black cane, spider legs of black mascara squiggling away from his eyes, red lipstick already melting round the corners of his mouth. Think Benny Hill done up in Alice Cooper drag.

" We’ve been exorcising some really dan-gerous demons, " Hank drawled in a Norwegian accent dripping with limp-wristed disdain. " Breaking out of rehab, out of jails, out of marriage. Through it all, one thing kept me alive. " He paused. Drugs? Underage boys? " Finger fucking! " And with that, Turbonegro unveiled " Sell Your Body (To the Night), " the best song from their forthcoming Scandinavian Leather (Epitaph). A swerve away from their masterful ’98 denim-glorifying deathpunk opus Apocalypse Dudes (newly reissued on Epitaph), the new tune neatly summed up the demonic, homoerotic ’80s: Alice’s Prince of Darkness meets Turbo/Ram It Down–era Judas Priest.

But those of us who made the pilgrimage to the Webster — including a contingent from Germany, identifiable by their Turbojugend fan-club jean jackets — had come to hear Apocalypse Dudes. An album as glamorous as it is punishing, and as bizarrely alluring as a Dictators/Mercyful Fate double bill set in a gay biker bar, it showed up as an import in 1998 and promptly converted almost everyone who heard it into raving evangelists for the emerging Scandinavian hard-rock underground. Behind Hank, the rest of Turbonegro were dolled up in their best Dudes finery (we got a darkside Village People: soldier, hayseed, cowboy, cop, sailor) and playing as if they’d never left. From the opening clarion double-helix twin-guitar ascension of " Age of Pamparius " — a hungry song about very good pizza — to the closing soccer chant " I Got Erection, " hordes of fist-pumping straight dudes shouted along and rammed their bodies into a well-lubricated froth.

The most homocentric tunes from Apocalypse Dudes were MIA: no " Rendezvous with Anus, " no " Good Head. " But they played all the hits: " Back to Dungaree High, " " Don’t Say Motherfucker, Motherfucker, " " Prince of the Rodeo, " " Get It On. " And Hank got the point across with an extended liplock on the slender, pretty guitar virtuoso Euroboy (not to mention some Mick Ronson/Davis Bowie–style simulated guitar fellatio) during the Ramones-meets-Venom action of " Are You Ready (For Some Darkness). "