If playing support to one of the UK’s most beloved bands in the cavernous, often soulless surroundings of a stadium can often prove a tough gig, then it helps if you happen to be The Hives. It’s not just that the Swedish stalwarts remain one of the best live acts you’re likely to see on any stage, at any hour (although that doesn’t hurt). It’s also that, nearly 30 years since the release of their incendiary 1997 debut Barely Legal, Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist and his cohorts still see the world in a different way to most. As they prepare for the release of the appropriately titled new LP The Hives Forever Forever The Hives, they still — perhaps more than ever — believe in the raw, ridiculous powers of rock’n’roll.
“The coolest thing about doing the Arctic Monkeys tour was that the audience was so young, and when you play a stadium, the nature of the beast is that half of them won’t have had any contact with underground punk rock. Which means that you get such great reactions like… fear!” Almqvist chuckles, dressed in customary monochrome and reclining in the suite of a Shoreditch hotel. “All the reactions you want when you’re a rock’n’roll band! Excitement, fear, confusion… I remember walking off stage once after supporting Maroon 5 and hearing a girl at the front say, ‘Did you see that? That was so scary.’ That’s the energy we want!”
Their unlikely Maroon 5 support came back in 2007, when The Hives had already landed a fistful of hits — the likes of Hate To Say I Told You So, Main Offender and Tick Tick Boom: fat-free, riotous romps that should have had no place nestled next to Adam Levine’s pop outfit. Their altogether-more-fitting dates with the Monkeys, meanwhile, arrived in 2023, just ahead of that year’s long-awaited sixth Hives LP, The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons. Sixteen years apart, the fire in their bellies remained the same.
“We’ve always consciously tried to book tours every once in a while where we’re playing to people who haven’t heard us. I like the feeling of having to try hard. It shouldn’t be too easy,” enthuses guitarist Nicholaus Arson — Almqvist’s biological and musical brother. “You’re supposed to be able to be the best band at the fish fry, or the carnival or the zoo or wherever you’re playing. At The Hives’ headline shows, we walk on stage and the whole room erupts, so by the time the soles of your feet hit that stage you’ve already won.
“But it’s such a great feeling to walk on stage and see people be like, ‘Are these guys wearing suits?’ and to see where that leads. And by the end, it’s normally always the same.”
“The same” for The Hives is a byword for pure, joyful, escapist carnage. Having separated themselves into a lane of one from the start by wearing matching tailoring in the mosh pit, gleefully kicking out against everything (“We like songs that are ‘me against everyone’ more than ‘let’s all unite and take over’,” notes Almqvist), and injecting a hefty dose of humour into it all along the way, they haven’t mellowed a shred in the decades since. Almqvist recalls the entire band developing a perplexing strain of heat rash on one early tour from playing such punishing shows while dressed like ushers at a wedding; Arson has developed a fail-safe method for not passing out on stage. “You learn to control the fainting,” he nods sagely. “You feel it coming on so then you just stick your head down and wait for a few seconds and then you’re back.”
For both, the thing that would pose a far bigger threat than playing the show would be to not play the show. “I think the people who are the worst in the ego department are the people who play really soft music because there’s something unreleased,” Almqvist theorises. “If you have a crowd of 50,000 people, you want to just jump in their face and scream. But instead you’ve got to sing a slow love song and then just walk off into nothing, and that’s when you start doing drugs and fighting people. Whereas I’m exhausted — I couldn’t fight anyone if I tried!”
In a world of relentless TikTok promotional schedules and knowing the minutiae of what your favourite pop star had for breakfast, The Hives are the opposite; a larger-than-life gang who’ve created a genuine aura and mythology around them. “I don’t want my rock stars to be relatable at all. That’s not what they’re there for. I wanna be like, ‘What the f*** is that creature?’” the frontman says. “Morrissey once said that the version of him on stage is more him than the rest of the time, and I kind of feel like that. And I also think a lot of the things I’ve done on stage probably are illegal if I did them anywhere else… it feels like you can get away with shit that you can’t get away with in the grocery store. That part of my personality could not fit in an office.”
If The Hives’ office is the stage and the studio, then lately they’ve been putting the shifts in. Where The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons was their first record in 11 years, their newest will arrive on August 29, following only two. The speediness nods partly to the “lubed up” feeling in camp.
“It’s momentum, I think they call it. We’re experimenting with it for the first time in 30 years,” Almqvist deadpans. But it also points to the excitement at the heart of the material itself.
Working with their longtime collaborator Pelle Gunnerfeldt, they also brought in a new pair of hands in the shape of Beastie Boys’ Mike D. “When he came over, we got so starstruck — everyone’s back was a little straighter when they were playing guitar,” the frontman laughs. Mutual fans of disrupting the status quo and yet winking at the audience while doing it, there’s a symbiosis to The Hives and the Beasties that naturally made sense.
“Mike D was such a good choice because, by producing it, he’s partly in charge of the sound, and what sounds cooler than a Beastie Boys record? “ Almqvist continues. “Those records are so lawless and crazy whilst still managing to interest millions of people. It’s shitty-sounding but everybody loves it, which is the coolest thing.”
The Hives Forever Forever The Hives’ opening line is about as unapologetic a statement of intent as you’re likely to find on any record this year: “Everyone’s a little f***ing bitch / And I’m getting sick and tired of it,” howls the frontman over guitars that will inevitably rip Alexandra Palace a new one when they head to north London to headline the venue in the winter. What’s riling the band up these days? “Gestures broadly at everything…” Almqvist narrates with a sweep of the arm. “There’s no shortage of things to be annoyed at. The people leading us are worse than I can remember them ever being, so that’s something to take inspiration from. But I also don’t like it when people say, ‘In a shitty political climate, that’s when the best punk comes’.”
“There was no great punk coming out in the 17th century, so it doesn’t really apply,” Arson nods. Not any, we suggest, that was documented at least. “That’s true,” Almqvist laughs. “There might have been some kick-ass bards, riffing on the lute…”
There are — thankfully — no lutes on The Hives’ latest, but The Hives Forever Forever The Hives does undeniably kick ass. Adorning its artwork dressed in matching crowns and furs, it sees the Swedes take their rightful place as modern rock’n’roll’s unofficial royal family: a beloved, chaotic institution who’ve been fighting the good fight for 30 years and — as their latest album title proves — aren’t showing any signs of slowing down soon. “For me, The Hives is exactly where I want to be in music,” says Arson. “We’ve always said we’re the best band in the world for a reason — ‘cos we always thought we were. It wasn’t just a schtick. If you sand a piece of wood until you feel like it’s perfect then it’s hard to leave that to rot somewhere. This is the band we invented and I want to keep doing it.” Almqvist nods at his brother, satisfied: “Someone should be The Hives, so it should probably be us!”
The Hives’ new album The Hives Forever Forever The Hives is out on August 29
