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Music on the Road

The Hives have the music world buzzing

By Joanne Suh
CNN Entertainment Correspondent

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- They're Swedish. They're punk. They're the Hives. And their popularity abroad has started to infect the U.S.

Already a huge hit in Britain and other European countries, the punk rock quintet, who hail from Fagersta, Sweden, are mesmerizing audiences with their fast, catchy, high-energy brand of music and their mod appearance, reminiscent of the 1960s British rock scene.

The Hives are currently on tour in America in support of their second studio album, "Veni Vidi Vicious." It's receiving a great deal of attention within the music industry -- a couple years after its initial release.

The band is made up of lead singer Howlin' Pelle Almqvist; his brother, guitarist Nicholaus Arson; guitarist Chris Dangerous; bassist Dr. Matt Destruction; and drummer Vigilante Carlstroem.

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The Hives, a Swedish punk band, performs their song 'Main Offender' at the Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, California (June 5) Play video

CNN caught up with the Almqvist brothers in Los Angeles, where the Hives headlined two sold-out shows at the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood.

CNN: Why do you think you guys are getting so much buzz right now? "Veni Vidi Vicious" was initially released about 2 years ago, right?

NICHOLAUS: People are slow.

PELLE: Yeah, we had to wait for people to catch up and it took awhile, but here it is.

I really don't know. It's a number of different things and it's really not for us to answer. It's up to music industry people ... or up to people, I guess, because what's happened is that people have actually bought the record because they like it or they heard a friend liked it. We were never the horse anybody bet on. We were just a band, and then we started touring, and people liked it and bought the records. And all of a sudden, it's really big.

CNN: What do your parents think of all this?

PELLE: They seem pretty proud, actually. We always thought we were successful because we thought we played good music. But now that we actually are successful -- in the traditional sense of the word -- they can appreciate it.

Obviously, it's not their kind of music, but now that they notice that we're popular, it makes more sense to them than us playing to no people at all, which is what we did for the first seven years.

CNN: So how did you really come together to form the band?

NICHOLAUS: We all received a letter with a time and place and we met. And there's the five of us and a guy we know.

PELLE: A guy we know called, Randy Fitzsimmons, he thought it would be a really good idea for the five of us to have a band. We didn't really consider having a band. Not even all of us played music at that time, but it's a small town you know, there's not that many people interested in music at all. We were just the people that weren't interested in anything else, I guess.

He's (Fitzsimmons) a member of the band that doesn't want to do this part of the job -- do interviews -- and he doesn't want to be in the pictures and he doesn't want to play guitar or the drums. He just wants to be in a band and do the rest of it, I guess.

CNN: What type of music were you most influenced by when you were growing up?

PELLE: Around 11, 12 or 13, we discovered punk rock music. We had a brief period around seven when we listened to hard rock, like AC/DC kind of stuff. And then what was played around the house was pretty much old rhythm-and-blues and '60s guitar rock records.

CNN: How did you come up with the "Hives" for the name of the band?

PELLE: Well, being 14 years old, we looked through a dictionary and our drummer Chris found "The Hives" and it said that it was some sort of a fever. ... We didn't really know what it was. We figured, "Eh, it's a disease and it makes sense for a punk band to be called something like a disease."

CNN: The whole mod style you got going. How important is that to you?

PELLE: We thought that it made sense for us to dress up a bit because no other punk bands were doing it, no other bands that were playing at the same places we played. So it was kind of a way to separate ourselves from those other bands. We also liked it when it felt like the band had a sense of common purpose. So we decided that we should wear uniforms. And it also looks good, which we like.

CNN: What is Fagersta (Sweden) like?

PELLE: It's a very small town. It's an industrial town with 12,000 people in it. It's very quiet. You can pretty much walk around town for a week without meeting anybody. People pretty much stay indoors.

NICHOLAUS: It's a small town filled with kind of content people. But there's still enough issues to keep it alive, I guess.

CNN: When you go home, do they treat you like royalty now?

PELLE: We're still pretty much the kids with weird haircuts. They just know that we're popular now. They're like, "Oh, I'm glad you're doing well." Some people pay attention, but it's not really different from when we were 13.