I've made many hopped, carbonated "ale meads" at around 5.5-8% abv. Some with d47, some with nottingham, and the best one with coopers ale yeast, which usually I hate. I've used spices in them too, like ginger, cardamom, juniper, lemon. The one I made with coopers had a tiny bit of ginger in it. It wound up tasting exactly like a witbier. It was weird. The rest had a more mead character. I was usually using a golden wildflower honey that came from orchard blossoms and sweet clover, mostly. I did a buckwheat one too that was nice. With D47, I had a little trouble with H2S despite lots of nutrients, but it went away in the bottle. Since the stuff finishes dry, you have to be careful to do a short boil. No more than 30 minutes and not too much more than 2 oz, I usually don't boil all of it. Even then some of it was too bitter at first. Age helped a lot. the only one that was good soon was the coopers one, which was my first experiment with this. You could say I've been chasing it since. All with good results, but it was never the same as that one, which was a witbier if nobody told you otherwise. And with that sucky yeast.
I've used hops as a bittering agent in sweeter meads too, like slavic peoples will do, with good results.