The Hives
Fools, misfits and miscreants of the earth! What have you being doing with your time? Eating big piles of chipped potatoes? Watching substandard football on TV? Erroneously imagining the non-riff-based travesty that is modern rock music to be exciting? People, it is as if you have existed only in pathetic colours like beige, or pastel pink. For two years, you have felt listless, wishy-washy and largely kicks-free. Bad! But it has been bad for a reason: so that you fully appreciate the return of the good times. And these only come in two colours: Black & White.
Yeah! The Hives, the curators of that perfectly balanced colour scheme, have been away far too long. During their absence, they have not been mucking about, oh no. They are now ready to bring the Black & White again, only more so. The Hives have made a record which has everything that you originally loved them for - kicks, riffs, good times, etc etc etc - while also being snazzy and new and longer and generally different from everything they did before.
You might almost say it's like making the transition from monochrome TV to colour TV, except The Hives are more Black & White than ever, so that would be misleading. That's why the record is called: The Black & White Album!
To recap: The Hives first imposed their B&W vision in the late 1990s, touring Sweden (their home nation) and Germany like crazy until 2001, when they took the world by storm alongside strapping young rockers like The Strokes and White Stripes. Their first two records were collected on a British compilation, called Your New Favourite Band, which went not silver, gold or even multi-platinum, but diamond! Yeah! From it, came the hits Supply And Demand, Main Offender and Hate To Say I Told You So.
With 2004's Tyrannosaurus Hives, they successfully patted down the earth around the flag they'd placed atop this measly globe, consolidating their repute for rockin' brouhaha with further hits - Walk Idiot Walk, Two-Timing Touch & Broken Bones and A Little More For Little You. Without even The Hives knowing it at the time, the first seed of Phase 2 Hives was sewn during the Tyrannosaurus era, when they met Pharrell Williams - the Numero Uno production dude from the kicks-hungry world of hip hop.
Pharrell may come from the state of Virginia, and The Hives from Fagersta, Sweden, but when these two giants of modern entertainment came together, the union of their differing talents worked like magic, setting The Black & White Album - yeah! yeah! - on its long and unwavering path towards massiveness.
And the true logic behind the title: If The Beatles could make a White Album and Metallica could make a Black Album, there was only one band who could make a record twice as good as those two combined. And as far as sales go, The Beatles' White Album sold 11 million copies while Metallica's Black Album has sold well over 16 million copies...so The Black & White Album should go on to sell 176 million copies...do the sums.
The Hives are now ready for global supremacy - next stop; Southbound. Say ‘Yeah'! And one last time: Yeah!