Review Summary: It's sad that Nickelback's one decent album is washed away in the sea of hate deservingly brewed by all their other repugnant albums.
Ah, Nickelback. What can really be said about this Canadian mainstream rock band that hasn't been proclaimed by millions of pitchfork-waving music lovers around the world? Just ask any respectable group of people what they think about this seemingly harmless quartet and you'll be greeted with a resounding, ear-shattering declaration of "THEY SUCKS!!!11!" without a moment's hesitation, amid sneering remarks about the lead singer's hair. And I don't really aim to contest that. We've all heard albums like "The Long Road" and "Dark Horse" just about enough times, haven't we? No? Well, you
must have at least heard their earth-conquering singles; and trust me, if you didn't like their singles, their albums are far,
far worse. Vapid, empty songs about sex, mixed in with laughable attempts at seriousness complete with saccharine lyrics and acoustic guitars (these are what you'd recognise as their singles). Each album is pretty much an unvarying regurgitation of the last. But among this wasteland of musical abominations actually lies an album that isn't really that bad, terrifying as it is to imagine; an album that comes under ceaseless fire from the populace merely due to that accursed name on its cover. An album that, no, isn't spectacular in any way, but isn't mind-bogglingly terrible as is to be expected from this band; and trust me, to say a Nickelback album "isn't terrible" is really something outstanding. This album, ladies and gentlemen, is 2005's "All the Right Reasons".
Push that 'play' button on your CD player with trembling fingers, handgun locked far away to prevent you from blowing your brains out over the course of the album, and you're greeted with... wait,
what? Double bass pedal? Highly unexpected considering we're dealing with what's popularly known as the world's worst band. Opening track
Follow You Home then follows on to a highly catchy guitar riff that will definitely get your toes tapping, while Kroeger's soaring vocals lead the verses onto an energized and lively chorus. It definitely isn't anything stellar, but it's admittedly a pretty impressive opening track. Could it be? Could this album actually be...
good?
And unbelievably enough, things actually start getting better.
Fight For All the Wrong Reasons continues the same formula (energetic riff-subdued verse-energetic chorus) introduced to us by
Follow You Home, but taken to the next level. A riff that we could even praise as vaguely technical by Nickelback's standards kicks off this rocker, with some infectious lead guitar in collaboration with the steady bass in the verses painting a rousing backdrop for Chad Kroeger's voice.
And admit it, as much as we all love to bash Chad Kroeger, his voice is pretty good, maybe even excellent, on this album. It possesses just the right amount of gruffness in order to provide him with the required manly seriousness, and at the same time just the right melodic touch to provide the songs with a tuneful mainstream appeal; and while the instrumentals are worthy of some praise, as with most mainstream rock bands, Kroeger's unique voice is really what pulls the band through in most of this album's tracks, good and bad alike.
Typically, you could divide a Nickelback album cleanly into two segments; the "hard-rocking" sex songs, and the slower, occasionally acoustic serious songs, and this album is no different from the rest. As such, what differentiates this album from travesties like "Here and Now" is that both sides of the spectrum are actually appreciable this time. We see major highlights in the hard-rocking side in the form of tracks like the opening two, mentioned above. However, the side that really shines and dominates in this album is the serious side, mainly because... well, for starters, it's a lot less over-the-top and has less of the forced energy of the more rocking tracks. An additional bonus is that instrumentals have improved tremendously in this segment of tracks. Where we would simply get uninspired chord rehashes Ã* la
Someday or
When We Stand Together, we get fingerpicked guitar in
Far Away, distorted piano in
If Everyone Cared, and
Savin' Me... oh,
Savin' Me... I don't mean to exaggerate when I say that this song is one of the best mainstream rock pieces released this decade. It manages to grasp that truly
epic feel, starting off with a simple acoustic riff, and building up emotion slowly with amazingly powerful vocals from Kroeger, while strings culminate in a beautiful melancholy chorus aided by some great backup vocals. While songs like these are for the most part nothing brilliant, they do manage to pull the album up tremendously.
And while listening to the album, you will agree with me that it isn't wrong to say that this album is enjoyable. While the rockers don't reach the heights of their softer counterparts, they are (for the most) still catchy and in the end, satisfying. While you may tell yourself that the radio may have tuned your ears to bleed upon hearing the radio-friendly slower tracks over and over again, you do have to admit that these tracks, unoriginal as they are, do possess a certain degree of tunefulness to them that will get your head bobbing in enjoyment.
Of course, there are, inevitably, major problems that do plague this album. The lyrics are horribly inconsistent, and for the most part just plain terrible (contrast
Heaven's gates won't open up for me / With these broken wings I'm fallin' / And all I see is you from
Savin' Me with
Just how many heads I'm tearing / Off of assholes coming on to her from
Next Contestant). Tracklisting definitely isn't a priority on Nickelback's list of priorities (if they do have any), but it nevertheless has to be said that it's plain outrageous.
Rockstar as a closing track?
Animals between
Photograph and
Savin' Me?
Photograph between
Fight For All the Wrong Reasons and
Animals? Such horrifyingly jarring sonic changes do have an unpleasant effect on the year.
And of course, there are just plain horrible tracks.
Animals is one track that is ruined by Kroeger's yapping, with mundane riffs and boring bass-led verses not being helped in any way by his vocals. I doubt I need to say much about the universally detested
Rockstar, and
Next Contestant, while not terrible (it indeed has a highly contagious heavy chorus), is let down by an excruciatingly vexing flanged guitar line in the chorus.
Someone That You're With tries to toe the line between hard-rocker and soft serious song, ending up being completely unexceptional and mundane as a result.
Side of a Bullet is a pretty new idea from Nickelback, who tuned their guitars to drop B and created a pretty Pantera-like riff in tribute to Dimebag Darrell, but the rest of the song is pretty terrible, due to the fact that Kroeger's vocals simply don't fit with those kind of riffs.
In the end, however, while nothing original, "All the Right Reasons" is an album far beyond Nickelback's usual grasp that may actually show them putting in a bit of effort for once. It may not be anything spectacular, but we finally have an album that we shouldn't turn away just because it's from Nickelback, and definitely doesn't deserve the loathing it gets.
