The Hives, the safest garage band in the world today, have already conquered Sweden and are now preparing to take America with their so-called 'punk rock avec kaboom.' Like the Ramones-- if there had already been a Ramones before them-- or a Stooges who learned to make noise and then showed no more curiosity about it, the Hives dish out power-punk that's totally predictable, but will knock your ass around your hips and blow the gel out of your hair.

The Hives are as tight as their groupies' pleather miniskirts, and they run as smoothly as a Japanese sports coupe: zippy, efficient, and they never need to go in for repairs. Drummer Chris Dangerous bangs the skins like a helicopter, and Howlin' Pelle Almqvist has a steady scream, with just one gimmick: every so often he lets his voice crack into a yelp, like someone just kicked him. "Got ouAYYYEt wayAYYE late... in 200AYYYYYEEE8!" The guitars are loud but a little textbook-- when they're asked for power chords on "Main Offender," they deliver exactly like you'd expect. And those chords have made "Main Offender" their big worldwide single, though for my money "Outsmarted" has the better hook and will get you jumping higher. Plus, instead of "outsmarted," it sounds like they sing "I farted," which is almost avant-garde in its crassness compared to the genteel 1950s tone of the other lyrics.

Veni Vidi Vicious was first released two years ago and immediately took Sweden by storm, but it's just now breaking in the States. The band is riding on the coattails of the garage-rock revival, though this band has been at it since the Strokes were too young to understand their own name: nine years, dating back to when they were teenagers. Fans of the quintet's debut, Barely Legal, will notice that the Hives have slowed a little with age. That album sounded more like straight suburban hardcore, and the great early song titles like "a.k.a. I-D-I-O-T" and "Hail Hail Spit 'n' Drool" gave way to the comparatively wizened "Die, All Right!" and "Knock Knock." Not to mention "Supply and Demand," which even predicts their fame in post-Strokes America. Kicking off with the monster-movie chords of "The Hives - Declare Guerre Nucleaire," they bang through twelve tunes in thirty minutes-- some of them indistinguishable from one another, but at that pace who cares?

As on Barely Legal, all of the songs spring from 'Randy Fitzsimmons,' the only mysterious thing about the band. The mythology of the Hives states that Fitzsimmons is the Svengali-like manager who got them together and writes their material. Hundreds of people are arguing right now about who Fitzsimmons is and whether he's real: if it's an actual guy using a pseudonym, or a guy who has that name but can't be found, or if one or all of the Hives write everything and they just made up the name. Even New Musical Express has weighed in on this issue (they think it's guitarist Nicholaus Arson). Maybe the story is some kind of statement, their way of half-jokingly saying they're a manufactured supergroup-- a Swedish punkcore N*SYNC. Not that it matters much; this is punk rock, not the Dead Sea Scrolls.

But the Fitzsimmons legend also reveals what's flawed about the band-- that they sound like five guys who took up garage-rock, instead of a band that actually played in a garage. Instead of coming from noise and chaos, they're rooted in pastiche and show business-- especially on their one midtempo song, the 50s pop knockoff "Find Another Girl." Your parents might dig this album as much as you do. For that reason, I like them both a little more and a little less than their supposed peers-- they're more entertaining, but maybe less fun. When they tour the States in the next couple of months, I'm going to check my own theory on who Fitzsimmons is: I'm betting he's the guy that meets them backstage, sticks the wind-up keys in their backs and tightens their springs to the breaking point before dropping them in front of the crowd. "FAAAAAYYYYEEind another girl! ALL RIGHT!"

-Chris Dahlen, April 25th, 2002