The Beat Surrender

My sister and I arrived at the venue, it was freezing it had been raining all day but we were excited about seeing the Hives, one of the biggest bands to have graced the stage at the Carling Academy, Birmingham. My knowledge of the Hives wasn’t huge, I was more of a commercial fan and only really knew them through their songs that had done well in the charts. I could see that they were a lot different to a lot of other mediocre bands currently in the charts and saw that they had an air of cockiness, which I liked and was interested to see how they would perform. My sister however was excited from the second I told her about the gig being as the Hives are one of her favourite bands and she also has a weird fondness for anything Swedish.

One of the first things I noticed after we had fought our way through the crowed and found a place to stand on the balcony where we were safe from flying plastic cups half filled with beer, was the excitement from the crowd. The crowd below us were buzzing and kept me and my sister fully entertained while we were waiting for the gig to begin. So many people were crowd surfing, the security couldn’t keep up, odd shoes were following their owners to the stage only to be reunited as the security guards dragged them to safety, or at least to the back of the audience only for them to be thrown up again and passed forward again. I saw the same guy crowd surf forward at least 10 times during the gig. I wanted to see him at the end to shake his hand an thank him for the entertainment but he’d probably been kicked out by that point.

Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist on vocals, Nicholas Arson & Vigilante Carlstroem – guitar, Dr Matt Destruction - bass and Chris Dangerous on drums make up the mad men, the Hives. Their music is good time music, they describe it as ‘blistering punk rock’ and you can’t argue with them. You wouldn’t want to argue with them, part of you would be to scared to and the other part will actually really like them and like to watch them….albeit from afar. There energy is amazing, their confidence endearing and stage presence, pretty show stopping.

The Hives comment on their website that their first albums were designed to be played to a 200 capacity club, whereas now they are playing to 1000’s and they note how larger crowds can be slower to react. The Birmingham Carling Academy is a fairly small to medium size venue, the crowd were instantly turned on to The Hives so I would like to see how a larger crowd reacts. To be honest I would be surprised if it took much longer than one song for them to be all frenzied up, like they were at the Academy.

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