Elias grew up in a conservative family. Following their move to Berlin, she ran away from home and eventually became a key voice in the city’s post fall-of-the-wall electronic punk and hardcore scene. Atari Teenage Riot was formed in Berlin in 1992, taking their name from the Atari ST computer they used, as well as the Portuguese Joe tune “Teenage Riot”. Their music was a highly political fusion of punk vocals and digital hardcore, and a vehicle through which they expressed anarchist and anti-fascist ideals. After Atari Teenage Riot's non-definitive break in 2000, and the subsequent death of member Carl Crack from a drug overdose, the members of ATR split up, and Elias set up her own record label, Fatal Recordings.

Hanin subsequently began working solo, with her first release, In Flames, arriving via Digital Hardcore Records in 2000. Her blistering album, Get it Back, was released in 2011, full of angular, dynamic vocals and a wide array of musical influences. Elias and her collaborators lean on drum and bass, hip hop, house, folk, as well as pop music as references across the 11-track LP, which has since been followed by pop-tinted work with Marcel Zürcher as Fantome. She has further collaborated with and been remixed by the likes of Merzbow, Thurston Moore, and Pigface, and earned herself the title of “21st Century Punk Goddess” in Chicks on Speed’s retrospective compilation, Girl Monster.