Nickelback

The Nickelback formula is in full effect on their latest collection of tunes voted, "Most likely to be heard in your neighborhood strip club," Dark Horse. With half of the songs being brashly rocking anthems to partying and getting laid and the rest forlorn ballads that yearn for love lost or never found; Chad Kroeger is either neck-deep in the lonely-at-the-top lifestyle, or he's just running out of ideas.

Given Kroeger and Co.'s knack for writing instantly infectious bar hits and this album's consistency in that regard, it would be ridiculous to consider Dark Horse anything but another solid addition to the Nickelback collection. This could be a blessing or a curse, depending on your viewpoint. If you're a loyal fan, the depravity-laden "Something In Your Mouth" and "Just To Get High," with its slightly snarled vocal and guitar-heroic solo will make the top of your playlist in no time. For the fair-weather fan, "Gotta Be Somebody," "If Today Was Your Last Day" and "I'd Come for You" bring the same emotional allure as past hits "Photograph" and "You Remind Me."

Not being proven rock veterans like AC/DC, who can get away with releasing the same album over and over again, it's hard to call Dark Horse anything more than the byproduct of a band that has yet to leave their comfort zone. That being said, the disc does deliver some catchy material that lives up to Nickelback standards; if you don't mind having heard it all before.

–Ryan Ogle
11.26.08

Nickelback are not known for their insight, but Chad Kroeger's caterwauling claim that "we got no class, no taste" on "Burn It to the Ground," the second song on their sixth album, Dark Horse, is a slice of perceptive, precise self-examination. They work with legendary producer Robert "Mutt" Lange (the sonic architect behind Back in Black and Pyromania, two of hard rock's towering monuments) here, and Lange decides to give the band a production caught somewhere between the two extremes of AC/DC and Def Leppard, pumping up some muscle on Nickelback's heaviest rockers and adding some color to their power ballads, suggesting some heretofore verboten suggestions of modernity in the form of electronic rhythms, even taking it to the extreme of adding drum loops to the surefire crossover hit "Gotta Be Somebody." Lyrically, Kroeger trots out a parade of dirty little ladies in pretty pink thongs, porn stars, strippers, and sluts, all of whom are desired and despised for showing too much skin; he's either had his heart broken by those loose women, or he's singing to the good girl left at home while he's out on the town. Nickelback do manage to shed their leathery rock skin a couple of times, first with an arena-rocking "Burn It to the Ground" and then echoing Toby Keith's "Let's Talk About Us" on the white-boy rap pre-chorus for "Something in Your Mouth," but these are mere glimpses of something unpredictable; Dark Horse was constructed entirely from the group's standard power ballad and hard rock templates. The mood only lightens at the end of the record, when Kroeger and company take a break from carousing to kick back with bros and a bong for "This Afternoon" -- its strum-along choruses are a relief but so is its mellowness, as Kroeger seems calmer, relaxed, even friendly. Maybe it's because there were no women in the picture. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide