"The Hottest Band on Earth Should Get Everything They Want, No?"

"For a lot of established bands, opening for someone else can be a daunting experience," he says, "but that was never something that kept me up at night with these guys. The Hives could literally play to anyone and entertain them, because they have such a visceral understanding of how to connect with a crowd."

"We always did like a challenge," Almqvist says. "It will be easy for us, you'll see."

After breakfast, the band members are driven an hour across Paris to a TV studio on the outskirts of the city to record a live set for France's most respected music show, L'Album de la Semaine (The Album of the Week). In the greenroom, the set lists of previous guests (the White Stripes, Placebo, and Jarvis Cocker, among others) are pasted on the wall. Following a light lunch of cold pizza, the Hives are ushered into the studio for rehearsal. The moment they plug in their instruments is the moment at which these five late-twentysomething men transform from their often dour, eternally deadpan selves into a purely streamlined rock colossus, running through "Tick Tick Boom" and "It Won't Be Long" with snake-hipped venom while never quite losing that collective ironic smile. Almqvist jumps off an amp, Nicholaus Arson does repeated scissors kicks, and Dangerous throws his drumsticks into the air and fails to catch them -- something he will remedy for the performance proper, at which an impeccably well-turned-out audience will go mad for them.

"France likes us a whole lot, you know," Arson notes.

And so they should. Ultimately, the Hives may never ape Maroon 5's sales -- too angular, too arch by half -- but then, who knows?

"Rock music isn't as popular as it once was," Almqvist muses at one point, "and this may well be the last rock record a major label will put a lot of money into. There are existing rock acts still out there, but they are all boring, frankly. It's my feeling that the world deserves a really good one: us. I truly believe that we owe it to ourselves and to every one of you to at least try to be as big as we can." He dips his head now in feigned bashfulness and holds up a silencing hand.

"No need to thank us. It's a pleasure."