Why The Hives are forever

In the grip of a global pandemic, in the United Kingdom, evidence that loud music would never die was provided by The Hives. In the late autumn of 2021, sandwiched in the middle of a bill between headliners The Offspring and opening act Bob Vylan, at London’s OVO Arena Wembley, the band from Fagersta, Sweden, seized hold of the room as if sheer force alone could shake it back to perfect health.

Standing at the barrier that separated the audience from the stage, grasping hands and getting up close and personal, frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist in particular made it his business to re-establish rock’n’roll as a contact sport. For 45 minutes, it was as if the 20 months of horror that preceded his arrival on the West London stage had never happened. “Wasn’t that a great song by The Hives?” he announced, more than once, between numbers. Even in the worst seat in the house, one could detect a glint of devilish merriment in his eye.

“That’s an onstage thing,” is how Pelle describes his irrepressible performance style. “I don’t want to be jump-kicking in the supermarket and screaming in people’s faces. I’m clever enough to know when to be that part of myself.

“I think what I do is a mix of self-aggrandisement and making fun, not of myself, but of the situation. The situation at a rock show is so absurd that I kind of can’t help poking at that a little bit. It’s like I’m breaking the fourth wall.”

As it goes, this also happens to be a pretty good description of The Hives themselves. Red-blooded in a knowing kind of way, in August, the group will unveil a new album, their seventh, the deliciously titled The Hives Forever Forever The Hives. With its sense of taut control, its appetite for driving the needles into the red with force and finesse, and its cache of very strong songs, its quality is far, far higher than might reasonably be expected from a band who are more than two decades removed from the curious time when songs like Hate To Say I Told You So made them the object de jour of the hipster crowd. But while the beautiful people may have moved on, the core audience remains loyal. Before the year is out, under their own steam, The Hives will play to a crowd of 10,000 people at London’s Alexandra Palace.

Seated amid the dimly lit splendour of the Hoxton Hotel, on an overcast Monday afternoon, Pelle Almqvist describes his band’s forthcoming album as being part of a “renaissance”. The word seems appropriate. Sipping a can of artisanal pop, and wearing a suit and a tie, this resident of Stockholm speaks English with the kind of refinement one might hear from a talking head on an arts programme on Radio 4. Rather fittingly, like a good artist should be, he’s more interested in looking forward than back.

On the subject of modern music’s growing appetite for nostalgia, he explains, “We avoid that as much as we can. We don’t do tours where we only play one record or do big anniversaries of albums. We try to steer clear of that. Because we want to still feel like an active band and it’s a responsibility to the band to release music.

“It’s just that we didn’t,” he says.

Here, Pelle Almqvist is referring to the 11-year album hiatus that followed the 2011 release of Lex Hives. Enmeshed in legal disputes and lacking a cohesive outlook as to the best route forward when it came to making new music, instead, the group operated in a manner the singer seems to regard as a kind of stasis. He likens The Hives during this time as being like Motörhead or The Ramones – they were the kind of band who didn’t bother to release a new album before embarking on a tour. “But I was a little bored,” he says, “although I love all those songs. Once we spend the time that we spend on a song, we can play it again and again forever. But [overall] I didn’t like it much. I still liked doing the songs, but I didn’t like the fact that there was no new music.”

Inevitably, during this period, the group received a sure sign that time and tide waits for no-one. With Alex Turner citing them as an early-day influence, in 2023, The Hives accepted an offer to support Arctic Monkeys on the South Yorkshire group’s headline tour of British stadiums. Suddenly, Pelle Almqvist was the elder statesman, although in this case, at least, not by very much. “When we became their inspiration, they were 15 and we were 19,” he says. “Or we were 21 and they were 17 – something like that.”

Certainly, early doors, they didn’t imagine they’d last anything like this long. Time was, in fact, that like many good rock’n’rollers, The Hives believed their engine contained about five years’ worth of rocket fuel. Three albums, then they’d be done. After touring with the Rolling Stones, though, one month after the Arctics’ tour, they realised they didn’t need to be quite so certain about this, or anywhere near as prescriptive. Instead, they could just rock. Which is why, today, 22 years later, just like the Stones, The Hives are still rolling.

“That tour kind of solved that for us,” Pelle admits. “If I was an engineer or a carpenter, I’d always be running across dudes that had been doing that for 40 years. In music it’s less common. But even back then they’d been a band for 40 years… I was like, ‘They seem to be fine. They seem to be having fun.’ So why would we not do the thing that we love as we age? Am I going to stop eating good food and fucking? Why would I ruin this for myself by just letting other people do it? So that [tour] really helped me change my attitude.

“And now we’ve been a band for over 30 years, which is crazy. I don’t know anyone that’s done anything for 30 years. Not really. Apart from rock bands.”

Especially good ones. And as the songs on The Hives Forever Forever The Hives testify, this is a band that has placed its feet in two different worlds. With showmanship and chutzpah, The Hives are able to provide entertainment for audiences that stretch more than a hundred yards into the distance. At the same time, though, having made their bones in underground music and punk rock, their energy remains visceral, their teeth sharp. Only a fool would turn their back on them.

“It’s a great feeling knowing that there’s going to be some genuine terror there [when we play],” Pelle says. “That’s what you want the reaction to be. People wondering, ‘Is this legal?’ We did a tour with Maroon 5 a long time ago and their crowd were scared of us, which was also awesome. We want rock’n’roll to be that way. I remember walking offstage and hearing a girl say to her friend, ‘That was so scary!’ That’s the reaction we want.”

The Hives Forever Forever The Hives is released August 29 via PIAS.

Listen to Pelle on the Kerrang! In Conversation podcast.

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