★★★★☆
It’s safe to say that guitar music of The Hives’ full-throttle brand has been notable by its scarcity. Certainly, more so than when the band dropped Les Hives in 2011. If it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, then somehow the return of the Swedish rock quintet feels impeccably timed.
Undoubtedly, excitement surrounding their return has been aided by an acclaimed support stint on Arctic Monkeys’ recent stadium tour, which exposed younger generations to the charisma machine that is frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist – a man with more one-liners than an Edinburgh Fringe comedy prize-winner. Then there’s the matter of two attention-catching singles in the shape of ‘Bogus Operandi’ and ‘Countdown to Shutdown’, which rank amongst the group’s finest ever releases. Together, it’s culminated in the world having its ears cocked to The Hives’ contagious clatter once more.
It’s like we’re back in the giddy days of 2002 all over again, a time when ex-Creation Records supremo Alan McGee pooled the prime cuts from the band’s first two albums, Barely Legal and Veni Vedi Vicious, for his Poptones compilation release, Your New Favourite Band. With the likes of ‘Hate to Say I Told You So’ and ‘Main Offender’ leading the charge, it brought the band success in Britain and beyond, resulting in an eye-watering contract with Universal Records, who reportedly paid $50m to place the band on their roster.
And then things went wobbly. 2004’s Tyrannosaurus Hives failed to pull up any trees despite positive notices and a brace of fine singles in the form of ‘Walk Idiot Walk’ and ‘Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones’. Then came the band’s grand pop experiment with The Black and White Album in 2007, helmed by The Neptunes and Jacknife Lee. Whilst making a decent fist of their pop frolic, not to mention housing one of their most beloved singles, ‘Tick Tick Boom’, there was a pervasive sense that the group’s appeal was wearing quicker than a backing dancer vacancy for an upcoming Lizzo tour. Sadly, this wasn’t dispelled by the time Les Hives landed at the turn of the ‘10s.
So, here we are then: guitars at full tilt, Howlin’ Pelle, erm, howlin’, and it all pushed along by the metronomic precision of Chris Dangerous’ tireless drumming. It’s as though The Hives have been thawed from ice; so untouched, and so preserved they defy time and space. And, of course, they return with an apocryphal backstory to boot. Randy Fitzsimmons, a giant figure in The Hives’ self-scribed mythos, credited for writing all their “insane punk and arena garage” material (as Pelle puts it) is dead. By his graveside: tapes and lyrics for his mentees to plunder for world domination.
Lead single ‘Bogus Operandi’ opens the album with ringing single chord stabs, sounding not unlike AC/DC’s ‘Hells Bells’, had the bells been ditched for Telecasters. When the riff and drums kick in, it unleashes an unbridled rock n’ roll thrill that’s capitalised by the following one-minute tear up of ‘Trapdoor Solution’: a hardcore punk thrash that harks merrily back to the band’s earliest days.
The aforementioned ‘Countdown to Shutdown’ follows, which features a bassline ostinato as infectious as anything you’ll hear all year. The Cramps’ sludgy chug is replicated on another standout, ‘Rigor Mortis Radio’, while the ‘50s shuffle and brass parp of ‘Stick Up’ has a chintzy allure all of its own.
Elsewhere, ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ exhumes The Ramones’ rockabilly punk for a three-minute distortion drenched dance, while ‘Crash Into the Weekend’ is a scratchy handclap stomp. ‘Two Kinds of Trouble’ has echoes of the band’s early noughties’ past; as does ‘The Bomb’, which races along at a rate of knots before the catchy cinematic slink of ‘What Did I Ever Do To You?’ starts to wind things up.
We may be in 2023, but The Hives still rattle with the tireless fury of a hormone-fuelled teenage garage band. “They do this better than anyone else,” gushed The Darkness’s Justin Hawkins on his popular ‘…Rides Again’ YouTube vlog about the riffs that underpin ‘Countdown to Shutdown’. And he’s right. But the observation applies to the album as a whole.
They may not break any new ground – and some may find their lack of expansiveness frustrating – but The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons finds The Hives placing defibrillator paddles on rock music’s prostrate and stricken body. This is a spine-stiffenin’, finger-clickin’, and head-bobbin’ record. Resistance is futile, so you might as well turn it up and admit, maybe there is life after death after all.
