It's been nearly two decades since the Swedish rock-n-roll heroes, The Hives, unleashed their debut album on the world and almost 5 years since new music has been released. Now, they will drop TWO intoxicatingly brash new songs, I'm Alive and Good Samaritan, on a limited edition double A-side 7" via Third Man Records. Both tracks were produced & mixed by Dave Sardy (LCD Soundsystem, Wolfmother) in Los Angeles.
The band explains:
I'm Alive is a song about crawling up from under a rock and obliterating all resistance that sounds like crawling up from under a rock and obliterating all resistance because it is a band crawling up from under a rock and obliterating all resistance. Use it in your own life to help you obliterate your own resistance! Musically slower and with more chords than usual, but heavy man. Real heavy.
Good Samaritan is a song about helping people help themselves by not helping them? Are they sarcastic or do they hate people now? Is this punk? You never know with these Hives and it's been a while since I saw them so let's all go see them again and see what they are on about? Musically faster than usual but a surprising dive into the chorus that feels like going into hyperspace. Now it's not surprising anymore. Oh well.
In the twenty years since the Hives exploded around the world, they have sold out stadiums and shared stages with everyone from AC/DC to The Rolling Stones. SPIN calls The Hives "the best live band on the planet" and frontman Pelle Almqvist "the greatest frontman in rock," and the BBC dubbed the band "a force of nature." Rolling Stone named "Veni Vidi Vicious" one of the Top 100 Albums of the decade and "Hate To Say I Told You So" earned a spot on Pitchfork's Top 500 Songs of the 2000's. They sold millions of albums world-wide with multiple RIAA Gold-certifications.