The Hives' Tyrannosaurus Hives comes out today and it rocks the rectum. I talk about the band, the record and their place in the latest rock 'n' roll revival on MSNBC.com:

Rock 'n' roll gets back to basics:
Little bands like the Hives at center of genre's latest resurgence

Rock 'n' roll, real rock 'n' roll — loud wild rhythmic music, ultimately derived from the holy pairing of black blues and white C&W in the '50s, with dancing and screaming and guitars and strippers and human sacrifice ... oh wait, I'm getting off track — is on about its fifth resurrection. The first sprang forth in dark clubs and lonely garages from Liverpool, England, to Hawthorne, Calif., less than a decade after the music's original invention, and the most famous revival centered around the punk revolution of the '70s.

We are in the middle of yet another rock 'n' roll resurgence: simple (but not simplistic) music stripped down to the elemental essentials of guitar, bass, drums, vocals and attitude (the White Stripes have even stripped out the bass); bands with short, slightly anachronistic names like the White Stripes, the Strokes and the Hives.

The Hives are the dark horse that may end up at the head of the pack. Some bands want to be the cure, others the disease — the Hives very specifically chose the latter when they formed, barely in their teens, 11 years ago in remote Fagersta, Sweden. The band's fairy tale rise from the sylvan hinterlands of Scandinavia to international dominance should be entering the completion phase with Tuesday's release of their third album, "Tyrannosaurus Hives," an ebullient neo-retro rock 'n' roll hyper-drive triumph, and a whirlwind tour of North America, Japan, and Europe to support it.

"We wanted to be really annoying punks and we thought a disease name would fit that," says Hives rhythm guitarist Mike "Vigilante" Carlstroem, speaking brightly of their formative days in excellent if heavily accented English. The lilting, musical accent is momentarily disorienting: like talking punk rock with the Swedish Chef.

"We didn't really know what 'hives' meant," continues Carlstroem, "other than some kind of rash." But the fledgling band — Carlstroem, bassist Matt Destruction, drummer Chris Dangerous, lead guitarist Nicholaus Arson (Almqvist) and his brother, singer Howlin' Pelle Almqvist — very much liked the idea of being itchy, irritating and forcing a reaction, which they most certainly did, playing fast short aggressive songs in an era of meandering self-pitying grunge, dressing uniformly in sharp black and white suits when slacker sloppy was the fashion.

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