The Hives: Still Dressed To Kill

Sweden’s garage rock kings prove swagger and speed never go out of style.

By Johnny Papan

Published on August 25, 2025

Dressed to kill in matching suits, the Hives’ blend of punk rock essence and arena rock swagger has been bringing sharp and raunchy electricity to their sound and stage presence for decades. Their tight, fast, loud and cheeky sound found them success in their home country of Sweden in the 1990s before garage-rock anthems like “Hate to Say I Told You So” and “Main Offender” exploded onto North American airwaves in the year 2000. 25 years after the release of their breakthrough sophomore album Veni Vidi Vicious (2000), the band is here to make a statement: that the Hives are forever.

The band’s latest effort, The Hives Forever, Forever the Hives is a 13-track garage-rock blitz, with collaborative input from Beastie Boys’ Mike D and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. Sonically, the Hives channel classic rock icons AC/DC and the Rolling Stones, both of which the band has toured alongside. The Swedish rockers move from one banger to the next, shouting anthems of rebellion or calling out the masses.

It felt really fun and horrifying to start a record saying ‘Everyone’s a little fucking bitch,’” chuckles frontman Pelle Almqvist from his home in Stockholm, Sweden. “We had to fight each other to keep that. It’s embarrassing, but also kind of cool. It takes up a lot of space. It’s such a vague generalization that it was kind of unstoppable.”

“Enough Is Enough” is the album’s punch-to-your-mouth opening track and lead single. The song’s blunt aggression is laced with theatrical social commentary. Accompanied by a gloriously unhinged music video featuring Almqvist in a boxing match, the Hives don’t pull any punches.

“It’s kind of an age-old tradition of rock songs about being sick of people,” he explains. ”Everybody trying not to agree about everything. That no one compromised their very singular worldview. You can use [the song] for whatever you think there’s enough of in your life, but I know what it was about in ours.”

Almqvist acknowledges the yin and yang of the internet: connective yet dissociative, relaxing yet stressful, beautiful and vile all at the same time. It’s a space of infinite knowledge and infinite stupidity. Somewhere you can simultaneously see and share valued memories with friends and loved ones while others are free to troll into your comments section with a barrage of meaningless insults.

“The way people are when there’s anonymity and no responsibility, it doesn’t really make them better,” says Almqvist. “If you want to know the feeling I’m talking about, you just have to spend five minutes on social media. The internet could have been an awesome thing. And part of it is an awesome thing. It’s fantastic. But, you know, since it’s a big expensive structure, it means that someone’s gonna have to make money off it and that usually doesn’t bring out the best.”

One of the album’s standout singles, “Enough Is Enough,” makes a potent point, joining the other tracks on The Hives Forever, Forever the Hives as a call for rebellion. Almqvist describes the project as being about “breaking the rules” and bringing forth questions of power, personality and the illusion of freedom.

“Freedom is such a broad, weird concept,” he says. “When people are fighting for freedom, it’s usually at the expense of someone else’s freedom. What is freedom if it’s not for everybody?”

The new album’s tongue-in-cheek cover features all five members dressed as kings. It’s a visual portrayal of them reaching the top of their game, but it’s also a nod to their dynamic as a group, poking fun at their deep yet comical bond.

“It turned out pretty funny because it’s like, well, if there are five kings, what’s the point of being a king? How do you reach decisions?” Almqvist laughs. “It’s kind of self-deprecating in a way because we can’t reach decisions a lot of the time since we are like a democracy of kings. What does that even mean?”

Almqvist concludes by reflecting on the last 30 years with the band. This journey began when they were just teenagers and evolved into a global adventure that lasted over three decades. They evolved together, being there for each other through joyous occasions, difficult life experiences and literally changing as humans in front of each other’s eyes. But the band itself remained constant. The feeling of creating music and chaos together was the one thing that never changed.

“It’s a comforting thing to have something that when everything else changes, this is still there,” Almqvist says. “We’ve done life together, it’s almost like being married to four dudes. We’ve seen the world, we’ve experienced every place together. The first time we saw Paris, I remember that. Eating baguettes and drinking wine with my friends thinking ‘How did we end up here?’ Or getting chased by fans outside of Radio City Music Hall in New York. It’s a pretty beautiful thing to have been through so many different things with your friends.”

For Almqvist, those memories aren’t just nostalgia — they’re proof of what the Hives have always been about: friendship, chaos, and a refusal to fade away. Thirty years in, the band still thrives on the same reckless energy that first carried them out of Sweden. The suits might be sharper, the stages bigger, but the feeling is unchanged. The Hives aren’t a band built for an era — they’re built to last.

Forever the Hives, indeed.