22-03-2009 The Hives

Supports: The Doits; Venue: Nosturi, Helsinki (Finland)
By: Nina Mende

As we arrived at dear Nosturi there were already many many people waiting outside and the show was close to be sold out: The Hives playing some last shows with their current album, almost half a year after returning from their world tour which lasted one and a half years.
But you can read more about that in the interview we did with two of the guys. The Hives are a Swedish rock band that first garnered attention in the early 2000s as a prominent group of the garage rock revival, playing garage punk, but were founded in 1993. Their mainstream success came with the release of the “greatest hits” album Your New Favourite Band, featuring their most well-known song “Hate to Say I Told You So”. The Hives are known for their “hilarious self-glorification,” and performing in ever-changing black and white suits.

So as I said, The Hives at Nosturi tonight, a Sunday night show presented by Suosikki, a Finnish teenager magazine, which was probably also a reason why it started so early. Doors opened at 7pm and the opening act began at 8pm. It was very crowded and the average age of the audience seemed very young, mostly teenagers were there. At 8pm sharp the first band began: The Doits from Sweden. The Doits is a Swedish indie band who released their debut album in 2004, has three albums released so far and did many shows with The Hellacopters. They played for only half an hour but got many people to dance along and also received quite some applause. The Doits talked a little to the audience. The music was quite slow and quiet though when comparing it to The Hives. They really fit better to The Hellacopters, but the audience didn’t seem to care and enjoyed the performance of The Doits as well.

After almost half an hour changeover the lights went out and a quite long intro began before some lights came back on in three steps: it was the backdrop script nameplate which lit up red. And finally the band came on accompanied by the loud cheering of a maniac audience going nuts. They came on stage in black suits with white outlines and white shoes, even the drums, amps and guitars were black and white, only the backdrop light was red. The five Swedes started rocking big time and the audience jumped along. Everybody in the audience tried to get a hold or a grip of Pelle (singer) and you could see the masses move to wherever he moved. He went down to the pit and very close to the audience several times, giving hands to many fans and played a lot with the audience. Nicolaus, the “crazy” guitar player played while sitting or laying on stage several times. Chris, the drummer, played with his drum sticks and threw many of them into the crowd during their show. The fans were fighting over everything the band threw: guitar picks, towels, drum sticks… During one song they stood still again for about two minutes, so not as long as they did during the festivals last year. The audience cheered to every self-glorifying thing Pelle and the rest of the band said and did, but well, it’s The Hives. The self-glorification is part of their image so we all just had to like it. And it was sweet as well because they have a nice accent. Every now and then they tried talking Finnish. The Hives played all their hits such as “Die Alright”, “Main Offender”, “Tick Tick Boom”, “Hate to say I told you so” and “A little more for little you” as well as many others. Songs from all albums were played. Some time closer to the end Pelle said as reason for the next song “for the unlikely event of another band but The Hives writing hit singles, we of course appreciate it and play it. Since this doesn’t happen very often we hardly ever play covers. So you all can feel very special.” And then they began with the cover. Since there was still snow and freezing degrees in Finland the band also announced that they now brought spring to the country. And as the singer introduced the band he did is as if we are landing – probably with their space shuttle – and all of the band members are co-pilots whereas Pelle is the pilot. After more than an hour they were finished with the amazing and powerful show which seemed to have given endless energy to the audience which was jumping the entire time, singing along and even moshing! As the lights went off the crowd immediately shouted for more – even in Swedish. The band of course returned, telling us that they love us with their little evil twisted and Swedish hearts. As Pelle asked the audience in Swedish if we like the new album, not many people responded but as he asked it in English everybody seemed to be cheering. As encore they played four more songs before it was completely over. What a sweaty and exhausting but gorgeous evening with The Hives.