Review Summary: Nickelback's All The Right Reasons features a few golden songs mixed with a few bland and boring radio-friendly ballads.
Honestly, all in all, we can all agree that
The Long Road may have been one of the worst albums of the decade. And for a while, especially with the release of the single,
Photograph, it was looking that way for the new Nickelback album as well. But by some grace of God, Nickelback manages to escape another pitiful, bland, and boring album like
The Long Road and manage to put out a good, but not special album that is called
All the Right Reasons.
By far, its not Nickelback's best or even close to one of the best of 2005; but what it does is give hope that maybe, just maybe Nickelback would build on the harder, raw sound found in songs like
Follow You Home,
Animals,
Side of a Bullet, and the truly fun song
Rockstar. It's pretty apparent that most people haven't either given Nickelback a chance outside of their boring singles, or just think its cool to hate Nickelback; because
Side of a Bullet is a really fun and hard rock song.
See, the problem with
All the Right Reasons and Nickelback as a whole is the multiple radio-friendly slower ballads that dominate radio like
Photograph,
Savin' Me,
Far Away, and
If Everyone Cared. These songs all sound the same, with their slower, almost acoustic verses and louder, electric choruses; and the same exact song structure. But even those most of these songs are terrible, there's something about
If Everyone Cared that just makes me want to enjoy the song. It seems so emotional, epic, and 'of the times' to me at least. I know its nothing special, but the song is one of my favorites for some reasons which I don't know.
See, but this album's best are in the hard rockers like
Follow You Home where its dominated by noisy guitars and Chad Kroeger screaming at the top of his voice.
Animals is another really good song with noisy guitars and a different song structure, but the song's lyrics are so dirty I feel as if I can't listen to it in public.
Side of a Bullet may be the most edgy Nickelback song ever created, as it sounds like a metal song. It's angry, loud, and very, very noisy. Its this album's best, if not Nickelback's best.
But, the major problem with Nickelback's
All the Right Reasons is the fact that Chad Kroeger either writes about his memories, or sex. So many songs are dominated by his childhood memories, random memories, sex, or girlfriends he lost. Chad Kroeger really needs to come up with new material because he's been regurgitating this stuff since
Silver Side Up and its time for a fresh start.
All in all, people are too harsh on
All the Right Reasons and Nickelback as a whole. There's a few good songs scattered here and there, mixed with some really crazy hard rockers. Some of the ballads manage to actually tug at my feelings, but the ultimate problem with this album is the utter lack of diversity in half of the songs and the same old lyrical structure used over and over again. But maybe Nickelback can build on their harder songs for their next album and maybe put something out that won't sound exactly like their last single. But, hey, I'm too optimistic.
