International Rock Sensations The Hives Release Their Seventh Opus ‘The Hives Forever Forever The Hives’

This interview is to inform you that International Rock Sensation The Hives, the best live band on the planet and still your new favourite band, lauded on all continents for their masterful skill and reckless abandon in the rock music field, have once again, sooner than you expected, created a new body of work the likes of which have never been heard or indeed probably will again.

A new record so full of energy, joy, anger and life that you will be questioning reality as you have known it. They finally did it. Every single song a single, every single a hit, every hit a direct hit in the face of the man. This, their seventh opus, The Hives Forever Forever The Hives, must be released upon the 29th day of August in the year 2025, through the venerable Play It Again Sam. Guitarist Nicholaus Arson talks to Hi Fi Way about their seventh opus.

One show down, how good is it to have been back in Australia on tour?
Yeah, it’s super, I mean, I’m kind of glad we had that show. The first one done, we haven’t played in a little bit, we did the Finland show, but before that it’s been mostly these small, more like television shows but it’s good to be back doing proper shows.

It’s been almost ten years since the last Australian tour which was with AC/DC.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the last time with AC/DC and I think someone said it was nine years ago or something. I don’t really know. But yeah, it’s been a long time. It doesn’t feel like a long time. It feels like it was maybe three or four years ago, but time moves fast.

For Adelaide fans did the planets not quite align with the schedule this time?
I actually thought we were going to Adelaide, but you know, when you book a tour there’s so many shows for us, so I don’t really see what shows are missing, but I usually we come to Adelaide when we do shows, but for some reason we didn’t do it this time. It’s a shame!

Has touring with new songs added to a little bit more excitement and flavor to the show now?
Yeah, I mean, it always does, putting out a new record and playing new shows, it’s always like a nerve, you don’t know how people are going to react at the shows and you don’t know how they’re going to fit into the set and stuff. But I think that’s the only way of doing it. You know, if we’d quit making records after Lex Hives and just played, I think we were all would all have been bored with that even if you can swap between our older material. I think the way to do it is to move forward. It always was for us, it’s either move forward or don’t move at all, really. I don’t think we could do these things where you play just the old stuff. There has to be new stuff in the pipeline, at least to feel like you’re alive a little bit.

Two albums in relatively quick succession. Have you been surprised with hitting such a purple patch after quite a bit of a gap between the last couple of albums before that?
Well, I think we’re not surprised because I think we knew going into this that we wanted to make two albums pretty much close to back to back. After coming out of such a fucking lull of not doing anything, between this and The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, we knew that we wanted to do something like this. We just didn’t know if we were capable of doing it. But, this feels good, we’re up and running again and we wanted to dabble a little bit with momentum this time around. We never really did that before. This is by far, I think the closest records together. Well, maybe the first and second record is like three years or something, but that was normal for us at the time. So, this is maybe two or a year and a half or something. So it’s pretty swift and very swift for being The Hives, so it feels good.

Now that you’ve got the momentum, has this set a bit of a blueprint moving forward in keeping being creative and pushing albums out, maybe every one or two years?
Yeah, I don’t know. It’s feels like this is the first time we’re trying this. We don’t know how our bodies will react physically to doing this, you know? It kind of feels like you’re going straight from touring straight into the studio and straight out to touring. I think that the time that we did that before was when there was so much touring on the Veni Vidi Vicious album than when we recorded the Tyrannosaurus Hives album, we were going between festivals and the studio and festivals, never being home, and it wore us out really hard., We’ll see where it takes us, but there’s no plan more so than working on these two records. This album now is what matters now for a bit, and then we’ll see where we take it from there, we’ll cross the other way when we get there.

Having the two albums out relatively quickly, were there a lot of songs there that just might have been good enough to fit either album?
Paint A Picture is a song that we played live before, also Bad Call, we’ve had versions of that which we have played live. There’s one riff that’s from Tyrannosaurus Hives, we tried to make that as an intro for the Tyrannosaurus Hives record. That was the Roll Out the Red Carpet, that’s on this record. If could have like a treasure chest of good riffs, and sometimes, apparently with that one it took us from 2004 to now, that’s like twenty years to finish that song . Sometimes it just takes a while, but I think the rest is pretty much brand spanking new. A lot of people have been asking, why wasn’t Paint a Picture on the other record, but sometimes it’s just where they fit.

Do you feel that The Hives are at the height of their powers right now and this album has eclipsed everything you have done previously?
Nice, thank you. As far as touring, I think we’re almost at the peak of it, when we ended the The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons bit, I think we’re better than we ever were as far as touring. So I think, we’ll just continue on that path with another amazing record then in that case. I’m glad you like it that much, but that’s the fun thing about this is that people are so different, they like every record we’ve made, or there’s people who have that as their favorite record, so they’re like, I wish you would do this, but that’s good for you that we’re playing more of the latest ones now even though we’re not coming to Adelaide, you might have to catch us somewhere else.

Sonically do you see much difference between The Hives Forever Forever the Hives and The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons?
As I thought it would be? I thought it’d be a way bigger difference. We just ended up recording with the same guy and they probably sound more the same than we thought they were going to. When we recorded the last one, we knew we had to do it in Sweden. When you’re doing the mixing, it just sort of funnels it into the same territory I think and probably sound more the same than we thought they were going to be.

How was the whole studio experience, is quite intense or exciting?
It can be both, but there’s so much stuff that you’re doing in a studio… it’s intense in a way that you don’t move your body a lot but in a way the only thing that’s getting exercised is your head and your ears which are being blown out every day.

Was it clear in your own mind in terms what you wanted to do sonically with The Hives Forever Forever the Hives before you actually started recording? Or does it start to come together once you are all together in the studio?
No, we usually have the songs pretty well rehearsed before we go in. We play a lot so we can do takes, we record everything live, so you have to be able to do takes, it might take fifty takes of a song. Usually for us it’s three takes and then usually we use the third one, or the first, it all depends, very rarely the second one for some reason. We record everything at once just to get those dynamics of the band, but then sometimes you’ll have to record maybe one or two takes more. As far as recording in the studio we always try and do it live.

What role did Josh Homme have on this record, that would’ve been pretty cool as well?
Yeah, yeah, it’s very cool. But he is more of a cheerleader on this record, mostly Pelle and him talking on the phone saying, “Yeah, that sounds great, why don’t you just release it?” They would be on the phone saying here’s the new Queens and here’s the new Hives.

Did you like what you heard playing it for the first time?
I’ve heard the album in a thousand different ways over the course of a year or something. I’ve listened to all the separate mixes, all the separate versions and different sequences that we tried. So we usually work on records and we feel until they don’t suck, that’s our process. You listen and you listen and you rework and you rework and then you go, this does not suck now. That’s usually when it’s good. That’s a great feeling because that’s when you know for a fact that it’s exactly the feeling that you’re asking for is that, I put the record on, but to me it’s like cooking a stew that you’ve been part of the whole process. You’re not going be surprised by the taste of it. If it tastes good, that’s great, but you’ve been involved in the whole process for such a long time that you already know that it’s there. With our previous records, I can hear it. The only time really that I listen to our old records is if I need to check a reprint of a vinyl or I got to check the test pressings. Then I listen through it and I usually think it’s very good, but the second I turn it on, the second the needle drops on the album. I hear it’s one of those things where you people say that they’ve almost died and they see their whole life flashing before their eyes. It’s exactly that. I can hear the whole album in one go because I’ve heard it so many times. When you have that feeling of having a record that does not suck, that’s exactly the same feeling as having not heard it, putting it on and being completely blown away. So, that’s the equivalent of that, but it’s different, you know.

Love the artwork, it absolutely sums up The Hives.
Totally, it was just a question of time, wasn’t it, before we were going to wear that stuff!

Beyond the touring, what’s next for The Hives?
The touring will take us through, I think, almost two years, probably… so yeah, it’ll be touring, touring, touring.

What bands have caught your ear at the moment?
You mean apart from the latest Hives album? I’m looking forward to hearing Split System, obviously there’s bands like Amyl & the Sniffers, Viagra Boys, King Gizz, there’s a ton of great stuff out there.

Interview By Rob Lyon

THE HIVES FOREVER FOREVER THE HIVES – OUT 29 AUGUST
https://the-hives.ffm.to/forever-album