I write this feature from a place of inner strength. I write this from a place of loving myself and loving those who show me love back! I feel honored that our site has been a home for a band like HIVE because they are fucking DOPE! It’s really cool to be able to hear and see them grow.
Their new album Spiritual Poverty comes out on Aug. 19th via Translation Loss Records and I’m here to tell y’all it’s a BEAST. This band has really carved out a sound that is all of their own. HIVE proves that a band can create insanely intense music while still creating sonic space for empathy. I love the emotional breakdowns on Spiritual Poverty that shape shifts into harsh audio storm clouds of fury! Join us as we celebrate the release of this EPIC album with the full stream taking place below, and make sure to pre-order the album HERE!
In all things with Hive there is intention and calculation. We, as a band, are who we are. We have always made the music we want to make, for better or worse. We have done our best to avoid trend hopping, and pandering to shifting demographics and popularities within punk and hardcore.
We have been fortunate to have experienced several generations of the music as people, and been able to pluck familiarities throughout the years to make Hive function for the past 8 years. Now, with our strongest line-up and record to date, our only intention is to stay true to this demented beast we have frankenstein’d together and continue to edge it ever closer to the cliff’s edge.
With Spiritual Poverty being our third full length, it was important to avoid the “third album slump” that many artists suffer from. Whether it be loss of focus, emphasis on experimentation, natural growth in musicianship – it seems easy to have a third album lose steam, and lose it fast.
If Most Vicious Animal was a hit upside the head with a billy club, Spiritual Poverty advances to a sledge hammer. We relieved the bowels of all that we’ve grown and harvested since starting in 2014. Each riff, every sound, every word was privately agonized over – so that it can fall into the wading pool of modern heavy music and hope it stands tall for someone.
The overarching theme to the record is mental illness and instability. From many angles such as personal anguish, experiencing it at societal levels within the fortresses it builds around people, historical accounts, and the torture of watching it take root and being bound from controlling it.
It’s a place of helplessness which can be near impossible to escape, and we watch it happen over and over, generation after generation, as if it were the first time.
Literally, Spiritual Poverty is the void left by the human spirit. The place that is crushed by the weight of modern life, and leaves us with a famine of reason. A barren womb from which to continue to grow as people, as a society.
Morgan Carpenter
