The Hivey League

So Interscope (home to No Doubt, Eminem, and Marilyn Manson) has dropped 10 mil on a band that was at the vanguard of a trend that now finds every other band on MTV sounding like refugees from mid-'70s Detroit. Furthermore, the Hives -- punks at heart, and thus contrarians -- have moved on. In other words, not exactly a sure bet.

''It became a new 'thing,' this new garage movement,'' says Almqvist. ''Everybody was trying to do the stuff we'd done before, so we figured we'd do it in a slightly different way just to not be predictable.'' Enter their current minimalist, robotic groove, a direction they spent six months discussing before settling in to write. The resulting songs -- from the churning clockwork of the lead single, ''Walk Idiot Walk,'' on -- are meant to be clean, machinelike, and propulsive, a throwback to their mid-'80s initiation into Devo. (That is, excepting a ballad intended as a cross between Screamin' Jay Hawkins and R. Kelly, with horror-movie strings. Nothing predictable about that.)

Making simple music is a complicated business. As usual, the creation of the album involved Almqvist throwing the first punch in a fistfight with his brother. The matter of dispute was something on the order of a chord progression. ''There's a lot of theoretical work involved,'' says Almqvist. ''We're basically trying to make three-chord rock music sound like brain surgery.''

Typically, the hives -- whose 14-date U.S. club tour begins in late July -- play at least 200 gigs in a touring year, and no small part of their rep owes to their record of performing nasty, brutish, short, scorching shows in which they attack their instruments until blood is drawn, as Almqvist kicks, preens, and taunts. The Hives are road warriors who intend to conquer the world by restoring proper grandiosity to good rock & roll.

Showmanship, says Arson, ''is something that got lost. David Lee Roth was a pretty good showman, but other than that, the '80s were crap, and the '90s were horrible. People just have to realize that if you're a showman, it doesn't mean your music's bad.''

''Muhammad Ali was a showman,'' says Almqvist.

''Yeah, he was a good boxer as well. It didn't mean he was a crap fighter.''

''That's what we're shooting for,'' Almqvist says. ''People don't think we're serious, but everybody knows we're the best.''