The Hives

The Swedes on making their Back In Black, royal waves and keeping their legacy alive through cover bands.

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It's 9am on a Tuesday, and a corporatelooking Howlin' Pelle Almqvist is conducting interviews from an office in Stockholm. "It's not my office," he tells Classic Rock. "Mine is better."

That's the kind of self-belief we've come to expect from the frontman of Swedish garage punkers The Hives, who on the cover of new album The Hives Forever Forever The Hives are looking royal, wearing crowns and ermine robes.

What was the creative spur for the new album?

We put out another album, The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, fairly recently [2023], and this was a sibling of it. They were partly made at the same time. That was supposed to be our punk comeback [after 11 years away], and this was supposed to be the arena record, our Back In Black. But it was punk also.

You've gone royal! What took you so long?