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Nickelback

Album: Dark Horse
Label: Roadrunner Records
Release Date: November 2008
Website: www.nickelback.com

After honing themselves as the good guys of metal rock through the late '90s when post-grunge bands like Creed and Tantric were beginning to falter, Nickelback survived the shift into the new millennium and even thrived through its first decade. The band's latest release, Dark Horse is proof of their endurance. Returning with long-time collaborator Joey Moi for Dark Horse, and produced by Mutt Lange (Shania Twain, The Corrs, Bryan Adams, AC/DC), the album has crunchy guitar rock flusters liken to Hinder with the melodic rock magnetism of The Goo Goo Dolls and a country rock luster emblematic of Saving Abel.

The deep throaty register of lead singer Chad Kroeger gives these songs an identifiable mark as the rest of the band lathers the songs in a palatable hard rock frosting with Chad's brother Mike Kroeger on bass guitar and Daniel Adair on drums, lining these numbers with crashing booms that send shivers up and down the spinal column, and guitarist Ryan Peake invading the tracks with a salvo of exploding ruptures and rapidly vaunting slingshots. The power rock rip-chords set off along Shakin' Hands, S.E.X. and Something In Your Mouth are seamed with salivating lyrics that are typical of boys locker room banter, and not just those in high school. But Nickelback really made a name for themselves in mainstream radio with melodic rock anthems in the past like Photograph and How You Remind Me, and Dark Horse is replete with songs like these including Gotta Be Somebody, I'd Come For You, and the reflecting pools of shimmering guitar chords that accentuate the romantic side of Kroeger's vocals in Never Gonna Be Alone.

The band knows when to power their songs with untamed adrenaline and macho-muscled lust, and when to avail themselves to the finer senses of romantic love. The band also shows signs of incorporating overtones of country rock into their songs like in If Today Was Your Last Day and This Afternoon, which agrees with their Vancouver-based heritage.

Some folks may feel that Nickelback have simply re-constituted the hard rock riffage and guitar shreds of AC/DC or Hinder on Dark Horse, but no matter how much Nickelback sounds like these other bands, their music always distinguishes them from the rest of the flock. Now in the middle of their second decade of existence, Nickelback have done more than any of their peers from the post-grunge era thought could be mastered, and Nickelback seem just as excited about hard rock motored riffs today as they were when they first formed in the mid-'90s.

Learn more about this author, Susan Frances.
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