Review Summary: An album that tries so hard to sell albums and please everyone that it pleases nobody.
Most bands, whether they succeed or not, try to be innovative, and if not that, fun. Even bands accused of being cash grabbing fools, they really are trying to make music while having fun in the meantime. Even the hair metal scene at least tried to make their music fun and entertaining. Here, however; we enter the mind of one band that doesn’t: Nickelback. It’s not hard to detect either, they just go at every used and generic idea in the hard rock genre, and believe me there aren’t many, and try to dull it further. They do this because this gets fans, and they will only dull it further with loads of cheesy ballads that will get all the girls screaming, it's all just for the money. It’s been quite clear Nickelback have been it for the money since even
Curb, and the band has only gotten worse with very few exceptions. Just like other Nickelback albums,
Dark Horse misses its mark. The album is incredibly boring, yet completely scatter shot, every misshapen piss poor idea is executed as mainstream oriented possible, making for an incredibly unpleasant experience.
Dark Horse has only a few decent ideas, and the first two tracks, "Something In Your Mouth" and "Burn It to the Ground" are the only songs on the album with the decent idealism.“Something In Your Mouth” is a cocky hard rock song, full of energy and groove; it’s easily the best song on the album. “Burn It to the Ground”, too, is full of energy and vibrancy, and it’s quite the anthem, making the listener wanting to shout along. Here’s where the problem with this though, the only band member bringing in the energy in technical performance is Chad Kroger, and even then, his sandpaper sounding voice irritates even the most durable of listeners. The rest of the band just chugs along, and while they do try for that manly pride in both songs, it just sounds rather simplistic in playing and style. Still the songs deliver as short, catchy hard rockin’ songs and for that, Nickelback deserve a gold star…
But alas, this is where the album starts to toil and rot. The ideas suddenly start to be much more airplay-oriented. “Gotta Be Somebody” is a pop song, and a bad one at that. Chad’s vocals in this song are particularly cringe worthy on the song, singing in the same bloody awful tone. “Gotta Be Somebody” also suffers from the inclusion of synthesizers, which would feel comfortable on a pop album, but not anywhere on this album, especially one that started with such heavy songs.
And from there, the album just pops out and dies. As usual with a Nickelback album, boring, tired ballads run rampant and continue sound exactly like the other ones, while the usual lackluster ‘songwriting’ gets a hold of every other attempt at rock music afterwards. See the problem here is that Nickelback are just plain gimmicky. I’ve never heard a record so aimed towards making a profit and forgetting about making legitimate music since the last Avenged Sevenfold album, which unfortunately wasn’t that long ago. I would love to write more, but really there isn’t that much to write about on this album. The same generic tunes, the exact same stuff on every Nickelback album. Even the stuff that wasn’t there before was just more attempt at making a profit, seen by “Gotta Be Somebody”. I would recommend this album to… nobody.
Recommended Tracks:
The first two tracks are decent I guess if you like fun hard rock, but everything else is just horrific.
