As the story goes, a shadowy recluse named Randy Fitzsimmons started the group in 1993 by mailing letters to five carefully selected boys in their early teens. Once convened at the first of many Hive Manors -- the basement in the home of their bassist, Dr. Matt Destruction -- the kids received tutelage, a la Menudo, in everything from blues music to dance moves. Fitzsimmons still writes their songs today.
Such is the Hives' ability to keep straight faces when discussing their creation myth that it's tempting to think they've come to believe it. Here they are in an unassuming Stockholm restaurant, enjoying a dinner of potato cakes with roe, with nary a smirk.
''People have a hard time believing that we have a sixth member,'' says Arson.
''Probably because nobody's ever seen him,'' observes drummer Chris Dangerous.
Dr. Destruction silently sips at his strawberry daiquiri.
An alternate version of Hivesian history would state that Arson is Almqvist's older brother, 26 to his 25; that the band members all grew up in a little steel town called Fagersta; and that their first gig was an eighth-grade Christmas show in 1994. Desirous of a distinctive look and fond of the MAD magazine cartoon staple ''Spy vs. Spy,'' they assumed their chessboard color scheme in 1997, the same year their debut album, ''Barely Legal,'' appeared in Sweden. ''It was verging on hardcore punk, like Bad Brains,'' says Arson. ''We just wanted to be 'Aaaahhhh!!' all the time. And we succeeded. That record is almost hard to sit through. It was all willpower and no skill.''
Dexterity was reserved for the cultivation of an appropriately surly and frenetic stage presence. ''We never thought our music would be popular enough for us to be professional musicians,'' says Almqvist. ''That was the basis for the antagonistic thing we had. We could have a love-hate relationship with the audience because we didn't rely on them liking us.''
The Hives believe in the Hives so deeply that it requires an ultrasensitive irony meter to sort them out. When they titled their 2002 U.K. promotional compilation disc ''Your New Favourite Band,'' they were being earnest. When they declared, in a press statement, that they would ''achieve total domination of the United States,'' they were kidding. Maybe. When asked, a second time, whose idea the Randy Fitzsimmons gag was, each unblinkingly responds, ''HIS idea.''
Before they signed their deal with Interscope, the Hives found themselves ardently wooed by every major label, the army of suits making extravagant claims about the acts they'd helped break. ''The weirdest thing is that EVERYBODY broke Radiohead,'' Arson says. ''And U2,'' adds his brother. ''When they get desperate they can do some ridiculous things to sign a band: 'What do you want? We'll get you anything you want.' But most of them just promised to bribe radio people.'' Reasoning that all large record companies, being corporations, are the same, they chose the deal that put total creative liberty down in black and white.
