There is absolutely no doubt this album will be another hit for Nickelback. “ Stick your diamond ring where the sun don’t shine!” On the rest of the album they act like the stones you can hop to between song verses that are otherwise bowel-bindingly cheesy. These massively appealing hooks are their biggest strength. Rather than trying to be something it’s not, it settles for simple pop melody, easy, relatable lyrics and to be perfectly honest, this feels like where Nickelback probably should have found their sweet spot. What the rest of the record does wrong, this song seems to get right. On a brighter note, “After the Rain” is truly a catchy and redeemable song.
On “Must be Nice,” Kroeger celebrates the sin of coveting thy neighbour’s success while f-bombing his way through indignant, child-like resentment with lines like “ Oh it must be nice/ To spend each day in paradise/ You wonder why you ever failed/ Your life’s a god-damn fairy tale!” Between lines, he and Ryan Peake fill up the volatile atmosphere with undeniably explosive guitar riffs and masterful rock solos which will have you tearing your tight black jeans in pelvic thrusts. The most cringe-worthy moments of the record are also the hardest. If Canada could be said to have a roots rock sound, this pretty much nails it.
#FEED THE MACHINE NICKELBACK ALBUM FULL#
The band doesn’t even bother with the pretense on “Song on Fire” – a straight up New Country chart topper with dubby, echoing guitar lines setting up another monster sing-along hook which was designed from the ground up for lighters in auditoriums and a swirling wind of hairspray generated from the mullets of a stadium full of former Bryan Adams fans. “Coin for the Ferryman” – an allusion to danger and death which feels a little on the nose as a metaphor nevertheless sounds great growled out in the world’s most unabashed, over the top, faux rock ‘n’ roll drawl since Def Leppard dropped their ever-present Hysteria. Despite being notably out of place among the rest of the songs on the album, it resonates as a line-dance friendly anthem for nostalgia and looking back on one’s glory days – right down to the mention of home towns, high schools and the prerequisite reference to what “ Mama always taught us…” It’s catchy and the data says people will love it, whether they admit it or not. You can’t help but wonder if Chad’s ex-wife Avril Lavigne had some writing influence here. The chorus pattern could be ripped from any and every country-pop crossover record to come out in the last decade. “Every Time We’re Together”, which will absolutely be among the first singles from the record, is a perfect illustration of the unholy mash-up of rock, cowboy boots and shimmery pop. On their 9th studio album, they’ve abandoned the simplicity of the original formula in favour of something far more ambitious – an amalgamation of many successful formulas that can best be described as what would happen if Disturbed wrote and performed music by Taylor Swift. In fact they had it down to a much-maligned and at this point well-documented formula of heavy, precision riffs, Chad Kroeger’s genetically engineered perfect rock rasp and powerful hooks written around fairly pedestrian themes. But what’s hard to deny is that what they did, they did very well. Their singles became so commonplace on daytime radio that there seemed to be no more pride left in admitting that you were one of the ones that propelled that success.
For many, Nickelback came to symbolize what happened when you watered down metal so it would appeal to pop fans. Praise for them is only spoken in intimate whispers traded in the shadows – the sort of secrets we share when we risk baring our souls while knowingly risking judgment. Nickelback is a Canadian phenomenon both in the sense that they’ve had huge international success and ironically, few will openly admit to being fans.
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