So, apparently in the small town of Kensington, Canada, if you get caught drinking and driving, the police have threatened that they will blast Nickelback’s music on the way to the holding cell. This hilarious new tactic is brought about, obviously, to discourage drunk driving. Now, the officer who made the threat has apologized to Nickelback and will not be taking action on the extra punishment. However, this is truly a testament to how polarizing Nickelback is. They sell millions of albums, fill stadiums all over the world. Yet, I don’t anyone who likes them. In fact, I don’t think I know anyone in the hard rock/metal community that’s even indifferent to them. No, the only emotion that seems to be out there, give or take a few internet comments, is complete and utter disdain. After I found out about this new threat from the Kensington police officer, it got me thinking. How does a band get this polarizing? I mean, were talking about polarization levels that 70’s Rush can’t even fathom. No band in existence has accomplished more of a love/hate relationship with the public than Nickelback. How did they get to that? Well, it’s kind of interesting if you really break it down. Certainly naming your group after a football position doesn’t help with credulity. However, they knew what they were doing. It’s a time old tactic on how to be the biggest band in the world. Write enough songs that are radio hits while still filling the majority of the album with heavier material to keep the original fan base. Early on they recognized that the music industry is a business and if they wanted to be the biggest band in the world they needed to write songs that would make money. So they did just that. They wrote, for every major label album, a couple of songs that they and the record company knew would be hits. And hits they delivered. ‘How You Remind Me’, ‘Someday’, ‘Photograph’, ‘Savin’ Me’, ‘Far Away’, ‘Rockstar’ and pretty much the entire ‘Dark Horse’ album are embarrassingly commercial. On the other hand, there are songs that rock. Their entire debut album ‘Curb’ is one of the best heavy records of the 90’s. Their follow up ‘The State’ is also a high quality outing. Even when they went commercial there are songs very much worth rocking to. ‘Hangnail’ is a riff I can hear all day, despite the chorus. Also, lets be real, ‘The Long Road’ is a pretty good album overall. It fucking punches hard when it wants to. It actually crosses the post-grunge genre and enters the heavy metal world. Yes, ‘Someday’ and ‘Another Hole In The Head’ are annoying. But ‘Flat On The Floor’ and ‘Throw Yourself Away’ slam like motherfuckers. The guitar tone even resembles Pantera at times. ‘All The Right Reasons’ even has it’s moments. Yes, it contains the atrocious ‘Photograph’. But it’s opening track ‘Follow You Home’ is almost as good as ‘Photograph’ is bad. To me it’s fascinating. It’s fascinating that band can write such quality and such crap on the same record. I can’t think of any other band that achieves the same level of duplicity in terms of quality. Unfortunately, the commercial crap would go on to dominate the rest of their albums. ‘Dark Horse’ is a choppy and inconsistent album that tries way too hard. ‘Here And Now’ is somewhat of a return to form, but it’s all for not. Chad Kroger does try to stretch his voice and his melody abilities on their most recent album ‘No Fixed Address’. And overall, it does work. However, with the annoying stereotypical vocal melodies out of the way, the music is too light. It may be their lightest album. Overall Nickelback have truly become masters of the music industry. That mastery has come at a heavy price though. But, who’s to say that’s wrong. They’re certainly successful. So why define success by quality of work? Nickleback certainly doesn’t.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Awful, just awful.
