Fans of the Swedish punk-garage revivalists the Hives have been getting antsy waiting for the band's new release, The Black and White Album. Fear not: The album is just what fans have come to expect from the band: Energetic, frenetic, yet driving punk rock.
However, this album is a legitimate departure from the tried and true Hives, incorporating actual singing, a synthesizer, and sequences in which the signature gnashing punk guitar disappears entirely and a more melodic electric guitar emerges.
One of the tracks, "A Stroll Through Hive Manor Corridor," is entirely instrumental - no Howlin' Pelle Almqvist, no guitar-thrashing, no drum percussion. Other tracks veer so far from the Hives' usual work that they begin to resemble other, entirely different bands. Sometimes the guitar or bass begin to sound like Franz Ferdinand's, with actual pitch and melody; or Almqvist will sing in a Scissor-Sisters falsetto, as he does on the track "T.H.E.H.I.V.E.S." This particular track and "Well Allright!" are both described, curiously, as "21st century disco-fied" on the band's Web site. Incidentally, these are the tracks on which the Hives collaborated with the rapper Pharrell. Unexpected, certainly, but still Hives.
The album actually takes on a pattern that suggests an effort to maintain the balance of old and new: The more classic songs, including the single "Tick Tick Boom", alternate with experimental ones, song by song. Even within songs that take on a slower tempo, more melodic guitar, or singable tune, there always remains some punk element: Almqvist may snarl and laugh in his Johnny-Rotten manner, or out of a slow, crooning start, guitars suddenly explode onto the scene, such that should we suspect for a moment that the Hives have gone soft (which they won't), we are reminded that that is quite impossible for a band such as this.
Almqvist has said, "We promised ourselves when we were 17 that we'd make three half-hour-long records of blistering punk rock, and so we did, culminating in 'Tyrannosaurus Hives.' This time, we didn't want 12 fast songs, then it was over.." Here, the Hives do take a risk in stepping from punk to grunge. They could very well upset their more purist fans or begin to stir up rumors of selling out. But the album is exactly what they intended it to be: another serving of electrically energetic punk rock core with space for experimentation and evolution. And second, when have the Hives ever been one to care for what you think?
