July 24, 2004

...gives me Hives

Just when you thought Hay Fever season was gone, The Hives issue another diabolical assault on the immune system:

Tyrannosaurus Hives follows on The Hives 2002 release, Veni Vidi, Vicious -- a fair neck-snapper of a garage rock assault. These Scandinavian sharps mix non sequiturs like Martinis. With the cock-sure bravado of Seattle's seminal Sonics and the penetrating Post-Millennial anachronisms of The Ventures-meet-The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, this band plays Rock Music, which evidently has been extinct until now. Furthermore, they are from Fagersta, Sweden. You cannot make this up.

Keith Phipps for The Onion...

At its most dizzying, Tyrannosaurus Hives suggests a low-budget attempt at new wave as constructed out of half-vanished memories, years after the fact. The details are all wrong, but the sound couldn't be more right. Tyrannosaurus Hives sounds as ambitious as could be expected from an album that clocks in under 30 minutes, even though its ambitions rarely extend beyond delivering concentrated bursts of rock 'n' roll at high voltage. Take the title seriously: This one's a monster.