The Hives have accomplished more over their 30-plus years together than most bands can dream of. The Swedish unit’s name is forever etched in the annals of music history as a pillar of the early 2000s Garage Rock Revival. Ever since then, the quartet – singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, guitarists Nicholaus Arson (Pelle’s brother) and Vigilante Carlstroem, bassist the Johan and Only, and drummer Chris Dangerous – has been hailed as one of the best live bands on the planet. Their reputation later would later propel them into the opening slot on tours with the most legendary of rock bands, the Rolling Stones and AC/DC.

More than 30 years in, the Hives are riding a wave of creative momentum like never before. The band has taken as many as 11 years between records, but on August 29, the Hives will release their seventh album, The Hives Forever, Forever the Hives via Play It Again Sam. Their latest full-length comes two years after The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, making it their quickest album turnaround yet. The momentum was so strong by their standards, they even finally smashed through a serious case of writer’s block and finished “Bad Call”; anyone who’s seen the band live over the last 15 years might recognize a version of it.

“Bad Call” is just one of 13 songs that make up The Hives Forever. Along with Pelle Gunnerfeldt, who has recorded and produced nearly every Hives record, the album also features production by Beastie Boys icon Mike D. For additional input, the band turned to Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Shellback. If you ask Almqvist, The Hives Forever is the Hives at their very best, and nostalgia be damned, hearing the shear bombast of these new anthems, it’s hard to disagree.

As anyone can probably tell by the band members’ nicknames, the Hives have always loved creating characters and personas. According to Hives lore, the titular Randy Fitzsimmons not only discovered the band then became its manager, he also wrote all the Hives’ original songs. And on every album, the Hives have adopted new uniforms, be it the simplistic suits of their 2000 breakthrough Veni Vidi Vicious and 2004 followup Tyrannosaurus Hives, the top-hatted magician garb of 2012’s Lex Hives, or the crown-and-robed majesty of The Hives Forever.

The Hives’ latest wardrobe choice makes them look like they’re aspiring towards establishing a legacy. They appear more deliberately posed than ever on The Hives Forever’s album cover, like a portrait of a royal family. And though it’s unrealistic for any band of any genre of any era to aspire to the immortal status of the Rolling Stones or AC/DC, with The Hives Forever, the Hives have taken one step closer.

Ahead of The Hives Forever’s release, Northern Transmissions chatted with Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist about maintaining the band’s recent creative momentum, playing to increasingly large crowds, finally putting effort into writing choruses, making and breaking their own creative rules, taking influence from comedy, and the Hives’ favourite Canadian punk bands.

Northern Transmissions: One of the reasons the Hives put out The Hives Forever, Forever the Hives so quickly after The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons is because the band felt like it had momentum for the first time ever. You didn’t feel you had momentum when you broke through with Veni Vidi Vicious, even with the whirlwind of all the attention the Garage Rock Revival had back then?

Pelle Almqvist: No, I’m not talking about that type of momentum. What I’m talking about is feeling like we can make records quickly. Even at that time, we toured ourselves into the ground, got our lives back in order, and then we would make a record, whereas this time, we decided for the first time to not stop and make the record between tours. Two years between records is the personal best for us.

NT: With a lot of endeavours, sometimes, taking extended time off from the road or whatever it is, it’s almost harder to get back in the groove because you’ve already fallen into a different rhythm. But if you keep going at it, it’s like you build up a bit of a callous, or you’re still in that groove.

PA: Yeah, [it’s] a little bit like that. It was important for us to not get out of the groove this time between records.

NT: How are you feeling right now in terms of being in that groove and where your energy’s at?

PA: I’m feeling really great about what’s gonna happen when the record comes out. We’re gonna play the biggest shows we ever played. All that stuff is great, but it’s been a busy couple of years. There’s a real excitement in us, but we’re also a little tired, even before the album comes out. [Laughs]

NT: I read that the Hives aren’t necessarily interested in becoming stadium-sized even though you have toured with the Rolling Stones and AC/DC. But despite that, on The Hives Forever, Forever the Hives, the band also strove for a stadium-sized sound. How do you balance that disinterest in playing massive stadiums but still wanting that energy?

PA: We had this idea that we would make a record that would work in a stadium, but whether you play a stadium or not is up to other people. You have to get people interested in seeing you in a stadium.

I think what we were talking about is more like an arena. I’ve been in the music biz all my life, but this is the first time I’ve figured out there’s a difference between an arena and a stadium. The stadium is way bigger.

But I’m just talking about the way those Rolling Stones and AC/DC shows felt, where everybody knows where the chorus is gonna hit, and everyone shouts along with the chorus. That energy we were going for. But every time we make a record, we have an idea we start working towards. This time, it was “What if we made a Back in Black or a stadium-sized record?” I don’t think that’s actually what it is, because when we started doing interviews for it, people were like, “Oh, so you made your most punk album.” That’s not what we tried to do, but all right. So whatever it is is whatever it is. But I think it’s a great record. I think it’s my favourite Hives record so far.

NT: I think choruses really make a band in terms the AC/DCs, but I read that you also never really truly cared for choruses.

PA: Yeah, a lot of times, it’s the groove of the verse that gets us into a song. A lot of our favourite songs don’t even have choruses. This Hives record has a lot of very clear choruses, and that was part of our idea of making an arena Hives record. We supposed arena songs have choruses. But it’s not something we’ve ever really focused on. We also weren’t really that into melody. We were into energy and groove more than we were into melody and choruses. I think that’s why our band sounds slightly different from a lot of other bands.

NT: I thought it was an interesting observation because to me, the Hives have always had very memorable choruses.

PA: It’s almost an afterthought. “Oh, this riff feels great. Let’s play this for a while.” And then something else has to happen, so we add a chorus.

NT: Do you approach choruses more with the mentality of, “Okay, we wrote the grooves and the riffs that we like. This part is more like work now. We have to do this now?”

PA: Yeah, it’s more work, but it’s more like we want to stay in the cool feeling from the verse, but we also want to go far enough away from it that when you come back into the verse, it feels exciting again. There’s a balance to be struck. You almost have to go away far enough to have a reset of your brain, then come back into it to get the emotional response that got the song started. So yeah, we love a good chorus, I suppose, but what we’re trying to do is go away from the main part of the song so that we can come back into it.

NT: That said, if you had to pick one within the Hives’ discography – or I’ll even narrow it down to the new record – do you have a favourite Hives chorus you’ve written?

PA: I’m gonna go with “The Hives Forever, Forever the Hives,” the last song on the record. It repeats a lot, that chorus. We usually like repeating stuff a lot. That chorus feels like a great chorus to me. I hope people sing along at the show. I hope it’s the type of chorus people sing after we leave.

We did make an effort on this record to actually have choruses. Why not try our best with that part, too? I think that’s the lesson for this record. [Laughs] Sounds like we should have thought of it earlier than 30 years into our career, but there you go.

NT: A theme that I pick up when I listen to the new album is breaking rules. A lot of the things you touch on in the lyrics on this album touch on social rules and cultural norms, but were there any creative rules that the band put on yourselves to force yourselves to work within a box?

PA: I definitely think so. We’re always conscious to have an idea of what the record is, and that also means taking stuff out. “We shouldn’t do this. We shouldn’t do that.” That’s also a part of the rules. One of it is that we like to play all of us in the room at the same time. That’s how we record. We might change a bit here and there – change a guitar – but 80% of the song should be all of us playing in a room at the same time. We spend a lot of time fussing over the songs and arranging the songs. Once you play the song for a while, and you don’t want to change anything on it anymore for a long time, you kind of know that song is right. Then we record it quickly. That seems to be where it works best of us.

One of the reasons we like the feel of a lot of debut albums is because they spend a lot of time rehearsing the songs and writing the songs and then record them very quickly because there’s a low budget. Something about that process seems to work really well for us [and] make it feel really exciting even though the songs are really meticulously crafted.

NT: Relating back to something we were talking about earlier about not trying to be so finessed all the time, I always feel like rock ‘n’ roll should be a little bit messy, like hearing the human imprint in the writing and recording. Were there any happy accidents or disagreements while making The Hives Forever that when you listened back, you were like, “Okay, this actually turned out for the better?”

PA: Yeah, sure. That’s always a thing. It’s a very abstract thing to make something perfect by not making it perfect. That’s where the artistic sensibility comes in. If you just make everything perfect and pristine – everyone’s playing the right notes at exactly the right time, you fix it in the computer, you do all these things to it so that it’s absolutely perfect – it doesn’t feel perfect anymore. And going back to what I talked about, what I like most is a really well-crafted song but kind of played live or played messy. Most classic rock records are pretty out of tune. So you shouldn’t worry about that too much.

We’ve spent a lot of time having rules, but once you’ve done that for a few years, you probably should get into, “Does this feel good?” and then go with that. Those rules are going to be with you regardless of you following them or breaking them, but does the song make you nod your head and smile? That’s the important thing. But the road to getting there can be anything, and that’s what you have to figure out every time. That can be pretty difficult, especially with a song like “Bad Call” where you don’t really know what’s wrong with it. Something doesn’t feel right about it for a decade, but you don’t know what to do about it. That could be really frustrating.

NT: But once you unlock that, it must be the biggest relief.

PA: Exactly. We ended up with, “Oh, it’s finally done. That was a relief,” not “This is perfect.” Now, we don’t have to think of the song again. That’s a relief. [Laughs]

NT: You talked about the Hives’ less-is-more, subtraction approach [to songwriting]. I’m wondering if that is partly why the band is so open to going all in on the visual aspects. Your music is much more minimalist, but when it comes to your appearance – your presentation – it’s costumes, it’s jumping, it’s high-kicks, it’s swinging the microphone.

PA: Maybe. I never thought about it that way. I guess there is a maximalism to it, but I was always attracted to some kind of minimalism. I fuck with the visual aspects, but that’s also really consistent. It’s always the black and white outfits. In a way, that’s also part of the aesthetic being such a throughline in everything we do: what the band sounds like, what the band looks like. It’s a band that really has an identity beyond what we as the members want to do. It’s almost like it has a life of its own and its own will, and we’re just following the will. We have an inner voice that we follow, and it’s all this stuff that is the Hives, but maybe that’s why it’s fun to go far with the visual thing; there are so many things that stay the same that we don’t feel like we’re at risk of losing the identity.

NT: Yeah, if not the outfits, then at least the concepts, the mythology, the characters. And speaking of your presentation, you’ve compared the Hives to many things including a family, a group of friends, colleagues, and a comedy group. That’s something I’d always wondered, if comedy or even vaudeville has influenced and if so, any specific acts or comedians?

PA: I’m not sure I even know what vaudeville is. I’ve heard the word many times, but I don’t really know what it is.

NT: That was like travelling showbiz where you’ll be walking backstage at a show, and there’ll be someone in half of a horse costume, that kind of old-time show business.

PA: I get what you mean, but I think that all sounds pretty annoying to me. [Laughs] But definitely comedians. The delivery of a punchline is a lot like the set up, and [the] punchline of a song is kind of like the verse and chorus of a song or, in a play, if you have a dramatic arc. I think all that stuff is the same throughout all these different disciplines. Trying to figure out what works and doesn’t work, I think we were definitely influenced by a lot of comedians in how we’d write lyrics or even how we deliver or whatever I say at shows or say in interviews. Our drummer Chris used to come to mine and Nicholaus’ house after school every day because he wanted to watch both the Eddie Murphy stand-up specials Raw and Delirious. I think he came to our house for a full year and watched both of them every day. [Laughs] It was around the time we started the band. I’m pretty sure that seeped in.

NT: Did Chris not have a TV?

PA: We had them on VHS our dad had bought in the States. No one else had that, so I guess that was it. But yeah, I think a lot of comedians have influenced aspects of the band, or at least we’re fans of a lot of comedy, and that’s ended up in there. I get a lot of credit for stuff I say onstage that people think is funny, but I think a lot of the more fun stuff is stuff the other guys say backstage. It’s just kind of an extension of that, whatever that banter is. It’s something that comes from the way we talk to each other in the band.

NT: Yeah, it’s something I often hear from comedians, that sometimes the funniest things people say is just offstage, off mic, just when they’re hanging out. I just want to use the last few minutes here to ask: I know you’ve talked about how big of an influence growing up American bands like the Dead Kennedys, Ramones, Misfits, and Cramps had on you, much more than English or even Swedish bands besides maybe Refused. Were there any Canadian punk bands that heavily influenced you?

PA: We saw SNFU when we were young. I liked Subhumans. Propagandhi, I liked them, but I wouldn’t say they were an influence. We played some shows with the Smugglers. Maybe Teenage Head is the one I’m most the fan of. Oh, we really like the Hanson Brothers. It’s an offshoot of NoMeansNo. They had like a Ramones side thing based on the Hanson Brothers, that hockey team from the movie [Slap Shot]. There’s also this band called the Doughboys that played our hometown when we were like 13 that we liked.

Pre-order The Hives Forever Forever The Hives HERE